


Hate the Dark

by NK (NKfloofiepoof)



Series: All Are One [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-02
Updated: 2012-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-28 18:48:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NKfloofiepoof/pseuds/NK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[G1 AU / post 1986 movie] After Cybertron's destruction, two survivors wait out their final months after crashing on a forsaken and dangerous planet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have this flagged for a partial rewrite (just chapters 4 and 5 and only a few chunks to make it more logical and less random), but I wanted to go ahead and get it over here as I'm not sure when Life will give me enough of a break to do so. If you're a new reader, please keep in mind that I'm aware of the logical fallacies in those chapters and will one day rectify them. This was my first ever story in this fandom.
> 
> This was the second Prime/Starscream story in existence on FF.net. Basically, I watched the '86 movie and hated it because it killed off so many of my favorite characters. This started off as a simple, 3-paragraph drabble and turned into a damn near 70-page character study. This is my first EVER Transformers story, so please bear with me if they're a little OOC in places. I've had it betaed by two people, so hopefully they aren't, but I'm paranoid. xX;
> 
> Cycle = 2 hours  
> Orn = 1 day
> 
> All other definitions of time should be the same regardless of continuity.

"You don't remember anything, do you?"

That question still gave me a chill even several Earth hours after it was originally asked. I could not deny the fact that my memory was a blank from the time I was attacked to the time I awoke just a few hours ago. I wanted to believe the gap in my memory block was because I was still in pain and feeling rather detached from myself, but the pain was fading, and my memory was still not returning. That was not promising.

He was in recharge just across from me and to my left, but I couldn't bring myself to look at him - looking in that direction meant I had to see the mutilated left half of my body. Unfortunately, there wasn't much else to look at other than him and where my left arm and leg used to be. We were in a cavern, a dark, rusty red that reminded me of Frenzy, and a tiny pinpoint of light around a hundred meters away marking the mouth of the cave was the only break in the dusky shadows. We had apparently been here for...a very long time. I couldn't suppress a shudder remembering what I had been told - what I had missed...

If I was to believe what he told me - and, truthfully, I didn't really have much of a choice - it had been more than twenty Earth years since I was attacked during my coronation on Cybertron. I'm still not sure who it was though there is really no one else it could have been but Megatron...but he looked so different, and Megatron was hanging to life by a thread when I threw him out of Astrotrain. I could only wonder what had happened and how he survived. I don't remember much of what he looked like because he attacked me so quickly, but he only looked like Megatron in the face.

I don't remember anything after that. All I know is what I was told. Megatron missed completely destroying me by a fraction, but he still claimed my left arm, wing, and leg as well as a good portion of my torso on that side. I suppose my body went into emergency stasis to spare my life which would explain why I don't remember the aftermath of the attack. I shouldn't be surprised that no one noticed I wasn't dead and didn't bother helping me - after all, we Decepticons are nothing if not selfish. I liken us to a pack of wolves on Earth: we follow the strongest, show no mercy for the weakened, and will do anything to climb up in the ranks. I liked it, frankly. It gave a challenge in life. I just never imagined Megatron would be so stubborn about dying so I could take his place. Even paralyzed and left to the mercy of the void, he still came back to stomp me back into my place.

I finally forced myself to look down, once again assessing the less-than-skillful repair job on my still exposed circuitry. I suppose considering the situation it was the best he could do, but I still thought he would be a little more experienced with repairs than this. Relying so much on Ratchet and Wheeljack to do all of his repairs for him must have deadened that knowledge if he had it in the first place.

I was incredibly lucky I still had my whole face considering how far inward the damage spread. The left intake on my chest was gone, and the cockpit was webbed with cracks. I was basically gone from the left shoulder down. Even I had to admit he had done a spectacular job on deadening my pain receptors. I only had to endure a dull ache now, and for that I was thankful even if I wasn't about to actually say it, not to _him_.

He was in bad shape too even after all this time - red chassis cracked, windshield shattered, one antenna bent slightly backwards, and I suspected one of his optics wasn't working either, but it was hard to tell in the dark cave.

The cave...I wasn't sure where in the galaxy it was, and neither was he. From what he told me, we crash landed here in a badly damaged starship five years ago, the same one he had used for our escape from Cybertron. Evacuation ships aren't meant to be used for such a long period of time, so it's surprising that it lasted so long regardless of the fact that it was only carrying us.

The idea that Cybertron was gone was still shocking. I couldn't quite believe the bizarre tale he told me, but...Autobots don't lie, especially not him. As dubious as it sounded, it must have been true. A planet that eats other planets...Unicron, I think he called it. Cybertron was its last victim - the planet I had fought for millions of years with Megatron to restore to its former glory, the planet I had longed to lead was gone, wiped from the face of the galaxy. Once that information had finally sunk in and I had ceased denial, I quit refusing his repairs. There was just...no point anymore.

In fact, there was no point to anything anymore as far as I was concerned. Why he continued to use what he could to repair me, why he continued to sit here and refuse to die with our planet...I couldn't understand it. Hope was not something which came naturally to Decepticons even under the best of circumstances, and what was there to hope for? That there were other survivors _somewhere_ in the galaxy? Did he even realize just how big a galaxy was? What was the point in relying on something so flimsy and intangible as hope?

I wanted to ask him these questions, but there he sat, completely unconscious. He had dropped into an exhausted recharge almost immediately after he finished explaining to me everything I had missed in the last decades. After the destruction of Cybertron though, I hadn't missed much. He found my body during the panic on Cybertron when Unicron attacked, separated from the other Autobots. He used a low-class starship to escape with my body and tried to follow the other evacuating ships as Cybertron disappeared into Unicron's bowels, but Unicron tried to suck us in too as well as the other ships. All he could focus on at the time was escaping and was unable to determine if any other ships were swallowed or fled. He was originally on course to return to Earth, but I suspect he became paranoid, afraid Unicron would follow us and swallow Earth as well. So, we flitted here and there throughout the galaxy until he was finally satisfied we weren't being followed, and by then...well, suffice it to say we were lost. It was a ship meant for evacuation and short distances, not interstellar travel. It didn't have reliable star charts, so there's really no telling where in the galaxy we were or how far we are from Earth or any other familiar planet with familiar civilization.

During the time we were running, he did his best to keep me in stable condition while unable to fully repair me. He claimed I was slipping in and out of consciousness throughout the many years he cared for me, and that was why he asked me in such an accusatory tone of voice, "You don't remember anything, do you?"

Okay, maybe accusatory is exaggerating, but he certainly seemed to be offended that I didn't remember anything of his struggle to keep me alive. I guess I would be too if I spent over twenty years caring for the broken body of my worst enemy only to have him try to claw out my optics when he finally woke up completely and tell him to slag himself.

Skywarp always did tell me I needed an attitude check.

"You should be resting," his voice murmured from my left, dragging me out of my brooding.

I didn't look at him as I responded, "I've slept enough, Prime." I heard him get up and slowly make his way over to me, his steps dragging from exhaustion even after several hours worth of recharge. He lowered to his knees beside me a little too heavily, and I had to fight the urge to squirm uncomfortably. The Optimus Prime I fought for so long would never have shown so much weakness even to a half-functional slag heap like me. I did cringe though when he made me lean forward away from the cavern wall so he could look at what was left of my back, supporting me with one arm across my chest. I hated it, but I couldn't keep myself from clinging to his arm with my remaining one, afraid I was going to fall over when a wave of dizziness came over me with the movement. He muttered an apology as he continued to examine me, prodding at splintered pieces of my chassis, the cracked stumps where my wings used to be.

"The necrosis has stopped again," Prime said after breaking off a brittle shard which crumbled like dust in his hand. It was what claimed my other wing - a strange...rotting stemming from the wounds Megatron had given me. Prime had fought it for the better part of the first ten years we were fleeing Unicron, and I had apparently had more of my body left then than I did now. The edges of the missing chunks of my body turned to ash, and it spread slowly, trying to turn me to dust, and it had managed to go all the way across my back to swallow my right wing before he stopped it. I don't know how, and he wouldn't tell me, but how he did it wasn't important.

"Again?" I asked, finally looking at him. My hunch was right - his left optic was dark, inoperable. It didn't look cracked or broken, so I could only assume the damage was internal.

"It tried to start up again a few days ago," he replied as he eased me back into the position I was in before. "I managed to catch it before it could do much damage though." I squirmed when I felt his fingers probe my exposed internal circuitry though I knew he was just checking to make sure nothing was compromised. I still hated the feeling though, and I lashed out with my remaining hand when I felt him get too close to my cockpit for comfort. Helping me or not, I didn't want him that close to my spark chamber. He didn't say anything even as he had to catch me to keep me from falling over when my movement knocked me off balance and sent me into another dizzy spell.

Once I could see straight again and was satisfied he was keeping his hands to himself except when necessary at this point, I asked one of the questions I had been wanting to ask since he dropped off in recharge so many hours ago.

"Why are you helping me?"

Prime stayed quiet, focusing on checking me over. I had to repeat my question twice before he finally brought his one blue optic up to look at me. "I knew you weren't dead. I wasn't going to leave you to share the same fate as Cybertron."

Somehow, I had a feeling he had rehearsed that answer. It felt too...fake. Sure, it was a Prime-ish answer, one I would have expected from him anyway, but I knew it wasn't the real answer. Since I didn't know the real answer though, I just snorted and looked away from him again. "You shouldn't have bothered."

He didn't respond to that. I'm not sure if I expected him to or not. He just continued to check for necrosis inside me for the next few kliks before standing with a weary sigh. He grabbed his rifle from where it was leaning against the cavern wall and started toward the entrance with tired, dragging steps.

"Where are you going?" I couldn't help it - I was curious. In fact, I was curious about this whole planet now that I was awake. Why were we hiding in a cave? Why was Prime so exhausted? Why was he focusing on fixing me instead of the starship so we could get off of this rock? I blame the curiosity on the long-dead scientist I used to be millions of years ago.

"Energy," he answered even as he continued to walk - well, more like shuffle - away. "The creatures on this planet can be converted to small amounts energy with relative ease - not much, but it's enough to keep us going." That would explain why he was tired but not why he was _exhausted_ , especially right after recharging.

It occurred to me that I was expressing, if only to myself, what felt disturbingly like concern. I quashed _that_ quickly. I was only curious, especially since he was leaving me alone on what was possibly, if the fact that he was taking his rifle was any indication, a hostile planet with only half my body to work with, and I wasn't even sure if my lone shoulder gun would work. I was about to ask about that when Prime fully exited the cave and proceeded to roll a large rock in front of the entrance, leaving me alone in the dark. In the pitch black dark.

I hate the dark. I _seriously_ hate the dark. Most Decepticons - I don't know if Autobots can or not - can see in the dark with the proper commands to their optics, but my night vision was deactivated if not completely destroyed by Megatron on Earth. See, beating me when I foiled his plans or otherwise angered him stopped working after a while, so he had to come up with new ways to put me in my place. I strongly suspect Hook helped him with ideas. After killing my ability to see in darkness, one of Megatron's favorite punishments was to seal me in a pitch black room and beat me when I couldn't see it coming to brace myself or shoot me at random intervals so I wouldn't be prepared for it or just leave me there for days to panic in anticipatory stress.

I could numb myself to being beaten and shot and otherwise physically punished. I couldn't numb myself to that.

I know Prime must have left me like this many times over the last five years and thought nothing of it - why would he? Benevolent, innocent, self-righteous Optimus Prime has no idea what kinds of power struggles go on in the Decepticon ranks and probably couldn't even begin to imagine the varying methods of punishment we use. Besides, as he said, I was unconscious the whole time except for fleeting moments where I seemed to be awake for a klik or two before drifting off again.

But I was awake now. I was awake and sore and in a pitch black, unfamiliar area with my last completely clear memory that of being fired upon by an enraged Megatron come back from the land of the dead. To one as weak and accustomed to punishment as I am, panic comes fast. It comes even faster when one is still reeling from so many shocking revelations - the complete destruction of one's home planet, one's extremely-near-death experience, only having half a body as a result of said near-death experience, being cared for by one's mortal enemy who could have finished one off at any time, being stranded on a planet in an unknown quadrant of the galaxy, being left alone in a pitch black cavern while one's caretaker goes hunting for obviously hostile alien life.

The remaining intake on the right side of my chest screeched to life to try to cool my already overheating systems, making me jump so sharply I nearly fell over. I was already panicking, and I hated it. Deactivating my optics wouldn't help since I was already in the dark. I didn't realize my hand was scrabbling for something at the side of the cavern until I finally found a suitable rock to hold onto. At least now I wouldn't fall over immediately even as my turbine began to whine from over usage.

I heard laser fire. Barely, but I heard it. I realize now it must have been Prime having found what he was looking for, but at the time, it just reminded me of Earth and Megatron's punishment room. By then, I was completely unaware of where I was, and for all I knew, that was exactly where I was. The scrambling of my own leg trying to find purchase on the cavern floor was instead the whisper of panels in the room's walls sliding open to point security lasers down at me while Megatron laughed at my panic from the safety of the security control room.

I heard another shot, and I couldn't hold back a shriek of alarm as I tried desperately to merge with the wall behind me, my torn side flaring with pain at the sudden movement. It just verified my hallucinations, and I knew then that I really was in that room again and that I had been hit by the wall gun. I shrieked again and released my grip from the rock on the wall to try to use my arm to protect my vulnerable side, but the movement combined with the pain just made me dizzy again, and I fell onto my torn side.

Primus, it hurt. For entirely too long, all I could feel was pain, and I'm sure my jerking and spasms weren't helping one bit. I tried to push myself up several times to at least lay on my other side and finally managed to succeed rolling over with my back to the cave entrance, but I was beyond rational thought by then, screaming until my throat hurt at every shot I heard, fiery pain lacing up and down my left side. My screams even hurt my audio receptors, but I couldn't stop - in fact, I started shrieking for Megatron, begging him to stop, pleading for mercy just like so many decades ago.

I was still hallucinating and panicking so much, I didn't notice when light flooded the cavern as the boulder was moved aside. I heard my name being called over my shrieks and felt a large, strong hand try to sit me up despite my thrashing, and I lashed out in response, terrified it was Megatron here to torment me further. I think I managed to tear something off of my attacker before powerful arms wrapped around me and prevented me from moving any more. That just made it worse. I kicked at my tormenter as well as I could with only one foot, my arm pinned to my side against his massive chest.

Something shorted in my throat, and I finally quit screaming only because I couldn't speak anymore. That may well have been the only reason I finally started to calm down because then I could hear his voice murmuring quietly into my audio receptors. Intense relief washed over me - that wasn't Megatron's voice. This voice was...deeper and concerned and calm. Through my hazy awareness, I was starting to make out words.

"...'s okay, Starscream - you're safe...calm down..."

I fell limp, gasping and staring blankly at the cavern wall. Not the wall of that awful room but one made of rusty red rock. My head rested tiredly against not a white chest plate with a purple emblem but a red chassis with a cracked windshield. A soft blue glow was reflected off my cockpit, the reflection of a lone, concerned blue optic, not twin red optics filled with hate and amusement.

Prime held me for a long time even after I stopped struggling. One of his arms was cradling my back where I was curled up in his lap while his other was very carefully digging sharp rocks out of my ruined side where I had dug them in during my thrashing. He amazed me with his ability to remove them without making it hurt even more than it already did. Once the last one was out, he still held me for a while longer, his free hand now carefully stroking my face as I continued to stare at the wall. It was stupid gesture of concern typical of an Autobot - it should have disgusted me, but at the time, I enjoyed it since it was such a light, gentle touch, something I never felt from Megatron. He didn't ask any questions; not that I could answer them with my vocal processor still recovering. Besides, I was screaming about Megatron - he could use his imagination, I'm sure, though I suspect he thought I was remembering Megatron trying to kill me.

He finally propped me back against the cavern wall the way I was before, his movements small and careful like he was afraid I would snap in two. Considering what I must have looked like, I wasn't so sure that I wouldn't. He sat me facing the cave entrance, facing the light. I couldn't say so, and I probably wouldn't have even if I could, but I was thankful for it. The light was comforting after my "episode", and I could see him as he walked back to the entrance to retrieve his rifle and several corpses of which I couldn't make out any details just yet. I could also see that the bent part of his antenna had been torn off. I knew I did that, and I actually felt badly about it; just a little.

Since my voice was going to take time to recover, I simply watched Prime as he dragged in the strange creatures he killed. They looked like snakes with pointed snouts which split in six different wedges, a long, pointed tongue sliding out past those six teeth-filled jaws. They weren't very big compared to us - only as long as my leg at most - mid-thigh to Prime.

He sat in front of me against the wall to my left where he had recharged not long ago. It was then that I finally noticed the tiny machine next to him, a machine which I recognized to be an energon converter. It was very small, normally only meant to be used during emergencies as it could only make and fill only one energon cube at a time and took nearly an hour to do so. It also could only use physical matter and raw energy such as electricity. A larger energon converter could use solar or thermal energy, but not this one.

Prime twisted off the head of one of the snake creatures, draining its black blood into the small cube the converter furnished. He made sure to drain every last drop before tearing the creature in half longways and harvesting its organs, adding those to the morbid mixture in the cube. It was messy and smelled disgusting, but beggars can't be choosers. He tossed what he didn't use back to the cave entrance and flipped the switch on the device so it could work its magic and convert the matter to energon. As it did so, he leaned his head back against the rocky wall wearily and let himself mostly shut down to conserve his own energy which, it appeared, was starting to run dangerously low. My attacking him didn't help, I'm sure.

The energon converter chimed when it was finished, snapping Prime back out of his semi-conscious state. He removed the palm-sized, shining cube from the converter and started making another, setting that one aside. Once the next cube was filled and the conversion process started, he stiffly stood up and shuffled over to me, holding out the lone cube he already made.

I just stared at him for a moment. The Decepticon in me normally would never have said what I was about to, but his was such a shocking gesture, it just slipped out.

"Are you insane?" I croaked, my vocal processor only partially recovered. "You need that a lot more than I do." Really, he looked ready to collapse, and his working optic was flickering. I honestly can't say if he heard all of what I said, and for a moment, it looked like he shut down while knelt beside me. "Prime?"

My saying his name snapped him back into reality. Or woke him up.

"You're the one who's hurt," he replied with that deep voice of his that made my exposed circuitry vibrate. "I'm just tired. And you might be drained after what you just went through."

Ah, Prime. I knew he wanted to ask what in slag happened, but he would never ask unless I offered first to preserve my privacy - that's an Autobot for you.

"I don't like the dark." I had to admit it. I didn't want to be left alone in the dark a second time, and I knew he'd do it again unless he knew better. I also knew that if he did, I'd just have another panic attack like this time. I just wish he didn't stare at me like I'd grown an extra head.

"That...was because of the dark?"

I favored Prime with a heated glare and puffed up as best I could, defensive and angry. "You wouldn't understand," I snapped. How could he? Pathetically benevolent Autobots couldn't possibly comprehend keeping an insubordinate in line with punishment, especially not with physical and psychological torture. Of course, Megatron never had to resort to such measures with anyone but me. I say the others weren't as ambitious as me though I'm sure they, especially Thundercracker, would have said I was more stupid than ambitious. It's not my fault the slagger just refused to die.

"Maybe not..." Prime was saying, "but I'm willing to try if you want to talk about it."

He was still holding that energon cube out to me, waiting patiently for me to accept it. Such self-sacrificing stupidity. I would have taken it if I had needed it, but I knew ingesting it when it wasn't necessary would just leave me lightheaded if not slightly inebriated. I might have enjoyed that under different circumstances, but I didn't want to run the risk of falling over again and digging even more rocks into my still throbbing side.

"Don't try to psychoanalyze me, Autobot," I snapped instead, spitting out the title with every bit of contempt I held for him. "I don't need nor want your misplaced and worthless sympathy." I leaned my head back against the rock behind me and pretended to shut down, falling completely still and dimming my optics to complete the act though I left them just active enough to watch him out of curiosity.

I couldn't tell if he was disappointed or not that I threw the subject back in his face. I _could_ tell that he looked a little relieved that he now had two cubes for himself instead of just one, and that was very interesting. So the Autobot leader could be selfish after all.

He turned away from me and removed the second cube from the converter, quietly mixing together a third and switching the converter back on. He then looked down at both of the energon cubes he made previously and made short work of them, devouring them ravenously through his mask. I always wondered how those like him and Wheeljack did that. Every time I saw Soundwave intake energon, it went through his mask like it wasn't even there, and the same was apparently true for Prime. I assumed he must have a real mouth behind it, but maybe not. Or those masks are made differently than the other parts of our bodies so emergency energon can be ingested while in battle.

That would be the ever intensely curious scientist in me again. How quickly I go back to that when I can't make mayhem.

While Prime didn't notice I was watching him, I couldn't help but notice something that made my curiosity spike again. Shortly after ingesting the energon, his hands started to shake, and even I knew it wasn't simply because of the energy spiking through his exhaustion. An exhaustion tremor was usually centered in the shoulders and neck and made the fingers twitch, not shake. No, that kind of convulsion was caused by something else.

"Let me see that," I snapped before he could devour the third once it was ready. I almost laughed at the very faint disappointment that crossed his face, but he didn't say anything, holding it out to me like he had the first. I took it but didn't ingest it, looking at it closely to run a scan over it. This was one of those times where being a scientist in a previous life came in handy.

I can't deny it - I was alarmed at what I found. The energon in the cube was the most impure, disgusting, and possibly corrosive energon I have ever seen. It almost couldn't be called energon, but it was. It certainly wasn't healthy though. There were microbes and other toxins swimming around in it, and when I turned it over in my hand, I could see breaks in the telltale shimmer energon is supposed to have, black streaks going through it. Since I'm not medically trained, I had no idea what it could do, and was doing, to Prime, but I knew enough to know it wasn't good.

"This is toxic," I told him. The look of guilt he gave me told me he knew it was, yet the moron was ingesting it anyway.

"It's all there is," he admitted. "I don't like it, but there's nothing else that can be used, and we're both dead without energon."

"How much of this slag have you been feeding me?!" I demanded. I was in bad enough shape without him feeding me poison!

"Very little," he tried to assure me. "Since you weren't awake, you didn't need it." That was a relief, at least, but I still didn't like the fact that he'd even fed me one cube of this poison. Five years of ingesting it? No wonder he had the shakes.

"There has to be _something_ else you can kill." It came out as an angry growl, and to this day, I'm not sure if I intended it to or not. "Organic worlds don't evolve a single species." I made a kicking motion with my remaining foot though the snake creatures were too far for me to actually kick them. I knew they had to be the cause of the toxin poisoning the energon - even the most barely functional converter wouldn't taint energon like that. It just wouldn't make as high a grade as would be necessary to actually fuel us.

Prime just shook his head wearily. "There isn't. Not in this area, anyway."

"Then look outside the area!"

"I can't." He looked away from me to the cave entrance. "These creatures eat everything, organic and inorganic." To punctuate this point, he held up his left arm to show me a missing plate surrounded by ragged fang marks. He didn't finish that thought, but I didn't need him to - I knew what he was getting at. If they could eat literally anything, I had a "come eat me" sign hanging over my head in bright neon.

That didn't mean I _liked_ needing to be protected.

"I do have one gun left as well as my cluster bombs. I'm not entirely helpless." He obviously wasn't going to call my bluff, instead favoring me with a look not unlike one of Megatron's when I made him exceptionally perturbed. I would have been amused at the similarity if I hadn't already been so annoyed. Realizing he wasn't going to budge, I instead asked something I had been meaning to anyway, "Why are we stuck on our afts in this cave? Why aren't you repairing the ship instead of me?"

"The snakes ate it."

Okay, that made me a little ill even though I didn't have a stomach. I really, really didn't want to believe that we were well and truly stuck on this dusty, horrible planet with its ravenous snakes that could eat everything in sight, but every idea and possibility I fired at him was shot down almost immediately. I suppose him being an Autobot shouldn't have made me automatically assume he was a moron - he wasn't _Prime_ because he was as stupid as Megatron. Naturally, in the past five years, he would have thought of all of the things I kept questioning.

"Are you going to eat that?" My thoughts broken, I noticed he was staring at the poisonous cube in my hand. I gave him a look of disgust as I passed it back to him. Let him corrode himself for all I cared. Sure, I understood the necessity and that he really didn't have any other choice at this point other than siphoning my energy for himself - something I knew Prime would never do; Megatron, yes, but not Prime - but that didn't mean I didn't look down on it any less.

Rather than watch him poison himself further as he took the cube from me and snatched the new cube from the converter, I leaned my head back and dimmed my optics again, this time to really get some rest. I didn't need it, but dozing had to be better than watching how low the high-and-mighty Autobot leader had sunk.


	2. Chapter 2

The tremors finally stopped.

I knew it would eventually kill me if I was forced to rely on it very much longer, but I had no other choice than to use the creatures' toxic blood and organs to make energon. Starscream could be optimistic if he wanted to be - he hadn't roamed the area like I had. There was nothing but rock as far as one could see, and for every five rocks, there was one of those ravenous serpents that could eat anything. The only thing they _didn't_ seem to eat was the rock. That was probably the only reason Starscream was still alive - they either couldn't or wouldn't go through the boulder I used to seal off the cave to protect him when I went hunting.

I let out a weary sigh and leaned my head back against the rock wall, dimming my working optic. I quit counting the number of times I wished we had crashed on a different planet - any other planet. I wanted so badly to be able to go looking for other sources of energy, but I couldn't, not without abandoning Starscream for at least an orn, and I didn't want to risk the snakes finding a way through or around the rock, especially now that he was awake. I can't imagine many worse deaths than being eaten alive by those snakes considering how badly the few bites I received hurt.

I kept him alive this long - I wasn't about to give up on him now. It was a blessing from Primus himself that we had made it this far, that we had survived the destruction of Cybertron to begin with. I could only hope that the same blessing had extended to others, that Starscream and I weren't the only Cybertronians left in the universe.

I knew Prowl and Brawn were dead - I had seen them die with my own optics, both working at the time. I had wanted to oversee the retrieval of the energon cubes from Earth myself, so I was on the ship with Prowl, Brawn, Ironhide, and Ratchet when it was attacked by Megatron. I don't think he expected me to be there, but his surprise was short-lived. I didn't see him kill Brawn, but I'll never forget Prowl as he fell backwards, fluids and smoke pouring from his mouth. He was dead before he hit the floor.

I never understood it before then, that phrase humans have, but after Prowl fell, I saw red. I had had it - the war would end there once and for all.

The battle isn't clear in my memory - they never are. Most of the time, battles are a blur between the time I'm engaged in combat and the time the battle finally ends, and this time was no exception. I suspect it's my central processor's way of numbing me to it since I'm a soldier by necessity, not by choice. I just remember being enraged and Ratchet and Ironhide giving it their all. The hole in the side of the ship was thankfully small, and only a few Decepticons could fit through at a time. It gave Ratchet and Ironhide the leeway they needed to deal a good amount of damage while I fought Megatron. They sustained damage too, mostly from one of the Seekers - to this day, I'm not sure which one - but they took down several Decepticons while I was busy.

My next clear memory was staring up at the ceiling of the ship, the Decepticons gone. I think it had been a cycle or two since the end of the battle - I just knew I was in pain - a lot of pain. A badly injured Ratchet was hovering over me as he tried to fix the worst of my damage, and Ironhide informed me of the situation as an attempt to keep me awake. The Decepticons had retreated, several of them, including Megatron, barely functional, and our ship had been severely damaged in the fight, drifting quietly in space about halfway to Earth. Ironhide had already sent a distress signal to Earth, and another ship was on the way to take us back to Cybertron.

Ultra Magnus and Hot Rod boarded the barely functional ship to help move me. I could sense my trailer's combat deck was already offline in death, and Roller was hanging on by a thread, my energy levels depleted too far due to my wounds and unable to sustain all three of us. I knew I was dying - it was just that no one else was accepting that fact yet. I just barely remember removing the Matrix of Leadership and passing it to Ultra Magnus to keep it safe until the rise of the chosen one before my optics went completely dark and the cries of protest from the others faded.

I awoke in Wheeljack's old lab on Cybertron, Arcee and Ratchet working diligently on repairing me. I honestly had not expected to wake up ever again, and I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. Just because I've always been prepared to die in the war doesn't mean I _wanted_ to.

Arcee and Ratchet were running a tremendous risk taking me there even with Ironhide guarding the lab to make sure we weren't caught. From what I understood, only half-coherent though I was, the moon base was under attack by the Decepticons who had been instructed to stay behind while our scouting ship to Earth was attacked. Their goal was to destroy our base of operations because they assumed I was taken there for repairs. If you want to hide something, you hide it in plain sight, so I was taken to Cybertron itself right under their radar. It was there while they were repairing me that I learned of Starscream's fate.

Briefly pulling myself from reminiscing, I looked at the mutilated form to my right where he sat in recharge against the back of the cave. I still could not comprehend the difference - could not get over how... _small_ he looked without his wings. Missing half of his body didn't help, I'm sure, but without either of his wings, he looked so frail and fragile. I knew he had not had a chance yet to fully understand what that meant, and I worried for the day that he did. I had heard horror stories of Cybertronians gifted with bodies that could fly suddenly losing that ability either in the war or through unfortunate accidents. They usually broke down mentally, and Starscream was already unstable enough thanks to Megatron.

I can't deny the fact that I was inwardly thrilled when I was told before my blackout that I had managed to defeat Megatron in the attack, and knowing I had taken him with me, I was content to die in peace. However, when I was told of Starscream's fate while I was being repaired, that Megatron was somehow alive, in a new body, now referring to himself as Galvatron, I wasn't sure if I was sad, angry, or both at once. I had been of firm belief for millennia that if Megatron were to die, the war would most likely die with him. I thought I had finally succeeded in starting that process when I was told I had defeated him on the scouting ship. I can't describe the...despair - that's the word I want - the _despair_ I felt when I was told he was still alive. He can call himself Galvatron or anything he wants - he's still Megatron, my sworn enemy.

Hearing that he had killed Starscream though, his second-in-command for so many vorns, was shocking. Starscream had tried so many times to kill him, yet Megatron never returned the favor until then, not even when Starscream tried to destroy Earth with Megatron still on the planet - the Seeker had disappeared for a while, but then he returned looking and acting just as unscathed as when Megatron originally dragged him away. I never understood why, and I'm sure many nuances of Decepticon behavior will forever remain a mystery to me.

Thus, the knowledge that Megatron had finally followed through with his threats and killed Starscream once and for all was shocking. Ratchet assured me I heard him correctly though, and I had no reason to question him. Starscream was being crowned the new leader of the Decepticons when Megatron - or Galvatron; whatever he wants to be called - appeared with his new and improved body and killed his former second-in-command.

Ratchet and Arcee were nearly finished with the most critical of my repairs when alarms blared all over the planet. They naturally assumed it meant the Autobots were fighting back, but I had a terrible feeling it was something worse - a lot worse. Insisting I was well enough to move on my own, I waved them both away in time to hear Ironhide's alarmed cry. I knew something was seriously wrong when I heard that. Ironhide isn't alarmed by anything.

The sky was hidden by what I swear looked just like a Cybertronian in the middle of transforming. A horrific voice vibrated every circuit in our bodies as well as every panel around us when it spoke. It was so loud and painful, drowned out by Cybertron itself seeming to shudder in fear, I couldn't understand most of what it said - all I caught was its name.

Unicron.

Despite the fact that I had passed on the Matrix of Leadership, that they had all witnessed me do so, and I no longer carried the title of Prime, Arcee, Ironhide, and Ratchet still all looked to me for guidance. Old habits die hard. How was I to tell them that even I had no idea what to do against something so enormous? It was as big as Cybertron itself if not bigger - how do you fight a _planet_?

A cold mix of rage and sadness upset my systems when I looked to the sky and noticed the debris littering space where the moons had once watched over Cybertron. The moon bases were gone, my friends possibly with them. Cybertron's artillery set the sky ablaze as the Decepticons overrunning the planet tried to fight back, an exercise, I knew, in futility.

I had no choice. I ordered them to the nearest evacuation pods. Cybertron was riddled with them for emergencies such as a laboratory accident which necessitated the temporary evacuation of a section of Cybertron, so I knew we would find one close by. The only problem was that these pods were only designed to hold two Cybertronians at a time, three if necessary, but there were four of us. I didn't want to, but I ordered that we split up, and that we would meet on Earth. Even an evacuation pod could make that journey before becoming useless.

Ratchet and Ironhide, albeit reluctantly, did as I told them, separating from Arcee and myself to find a pod while Arcee and I searched for our own. We didn't get far before the ground lurched underneath us, throwing us forward with a deafening shriek of twisted metal. Debris rained around us, and for a brief moment, I stayed where I fell, covering my head to protect it.

I can't deny that I was beginning to panic by the time I looked up to see only the very edge of that planet-sized creature's foot resting in the ground behind us. Impossibly sharp shards of metal were sticking out of the ground at all angles around us, two of which had pierced my leg, but I was lucky. Arcee lay beside me, a shard of debris impaling her spark chamber. At the very least, she died quickly, but that did not mean it hurt any less seeing her dead beside me.

I had no time to grieve for her much as I wish I did. If I didn't want to share her fate, I had to focus on escaping. Pulling out the metal impaling my leg, I continued to search for an escape pod. I knew one had to be nearby - I just needed to find it.

That was when I found him. Fallen against the wall of a building and forgotten by his fellow Decepticons, the Decepticons he dreamed so highly of ruling over, was Starscream. His left arm, leg, and wing were gone, and that side of his torso was scorched. I thought it sad at first, that someone with such spirit and ambition was simply cast aside and forgotten entirely, that the Decepticons had not at least given him a proper farewell. He had served them diligently for millions of years - he deserved better than to be forgotten like an obsolete part.

It was during that brief reverie that I noticed he wasn't dead.

I'm not sure exactly what clued me in. I think I saw his damaged side spark or maybe his hand twitch. Whatever it was, it caught my attention, and I limped to his side to make sure I wasn't imagining things. He was, indeed, still alive, but he was deep in stasis - a coma, I think humans would have called it. It didn't take me even an astrosecond to decide what to do - Arcee was dead, Starscream was not, and enemy or not, I was not going to leave him to be finished off by the awful thing tearing into the planet, not when I was so close to an escape.

His smaller body folded into my arms easily, especially with two appendages and a wing missing, and I was able to carry him without difficulty despite my injured leg. Another horrific tremor rocked the planet, and I had not the courage to look back for the cause, running as fast as I could to the evacuation pod once I found it. I left Starscream on the floor, vowing to make him more comfortable if we escaped alive, and practically dove into the control seat, flipping switches as I went. We managed to escape even as the planet broke up around us and was swallowed by Unicron.

After engulfing Cybertron, Unicron then did his best to swallow every single evacuation pod littering the now empty void of space where our beloved planet once hovered. There were far more evacuees than I thought there would be, nearly a hundred pods if not more all trying to escape in every direction imaginable. I could only hope some of those who escaped Unicron's hungry jaws were my friends.

I couldn't watch. Regardless of the despair and fear I felt for my friends, I felt the controls lurch to the side as Unicron dove for us next. It took nearly a breem to escape, and its yell of frustration shook the whole ship so thoroughly, I worried for a moment that it would be shaken apart. Once the vibrations ceased, I made the ship fly at the maximum speed it was capable of, heading back to Earth.

It was en route to Earth that I became paranoid. While I was looking over Starscream and assessing his damage, Unicron's frustrated roar continued to replay in my memory, and my imagination ran wild. I began to worry about why it seemed to be so insistent on devouring every last evacuation ship despite how tiny they were comparatively, and I worried that it would hunt down those who escaped. If so, I couldn't allow it to follow me to Earth and devour that planet as well. I changed course and delved deeper into the galaxy.

Unicron didn't follow us, and only now do I realize that perhaps the last quarter of a vorn could have been different had I not allowed paranoia to dictate my actions. It was another of Primus' blessings that our ship, only meant to be used for short distances such as that from Cybertron to Earth, lasted as long as it did. Twenty Earth years, it carried me and Starscream through the galaxy, only a few times trying to break down, and the times it did, they were easily fixed. Unfortunately, by the time I finally accepted the fact that we were no longer in danger from Unicron following us ten years into our journey, we were completely lost. I couldn't even backtrack our journey at that point, so the last ten years were spent trying to find clues as to where we were in the galaxy and determine our proximity to Earth as well as sending distress calls out through the void in the hopes that one would be heard. I didn't have my hopes up even then that it would work - again, it was strictly meant for evacuations. The signal would travel through space, but it was weak and could easily be missed.

During that time, Starscream remained in stasis, and I tried to repair what I could. I'm not medically trained - the most I can do is field repairs in battle, not replace missing limbs, but I did my best with him. His life wasn't immediately in danger, so most of what I focused on was making him comfortable, tying off leaking piping and sparking cables and numbing his pain receptors. I talked to him as I worked - it's stupid, I know, but even though I knew he couldn't hear me, it made me feel better to have someone to talk to. It also helped me notice earlier that something was seriously wrong.

It started as simply a line of ash grey rimming the edges of his missing limbs, and I originally dismissed it as simply his paint job peeling from my work. It wasn't until I went to clean it at one point and the outside edge of his missing arm crumbled like dust that I realized it was something much more serious.

He was rotting right there in front of me. Machines don't rot, but I couldn't think of any other way to describe it, and without a proper medical database at my disposal, I couldn't determine its cause, what it was, or how best to fight it. I tried everything I could think of, but through the course of the first ten years when we were fleeing Unicron - the ten years before I turned around and started searching for Earth - it only got worse and worse. The necrosis swallowed what little was left of his arm and leg all the way to his shoulder and pelvic junction where it then started on the scorch marks on his side. By the time I managed to stop it, the vent on his left shoulder down to his hip was half gone, exposing a cross-section of his insides, and most of the circuitry across his back was exposed as well from where the necrosis had snaked across his back and swallowed his right wing. Only half his wing was beyond help, but the whole thing had to be removed to delay the spread of the necrosis. I had just enough spare metal to cover the gaping wound covering his back so I could at least lay him on his back without putting him in pain, but the horrific wound trailing down one whole side of his body had to remain the way it was.

His initial reaction to the loss of both wings was actually much better than I anticipated, but I knew I had bombarded him with too much information - too many shocking facts - all at once, and it was taking a while to fully sink in. I just hoped the necrosis wouldn't try to begin again as it had just before he finally awoke - there wasn't much of his body left that he could lose before his life would be in severe danger. Plus the procedure I used to stop it was extremely risky, especially now that we were exposed to the elements of this Primus forsaken planet with the proper medical facilities and containers nowhere in sight. I thought I'd killed him the last time, and I preferred to not go through that trauma again.

"Don't you Autobots know it's rude to stare?"

"I didn't know you were awake." I almost asked him how he was feeling, but I stopped myself this time. While I think I'd be just as cranky if I were in his condition, I just didn't have the energy to endure his cutting sarcasm today. Of course, Starscream was not exactly known for his good moods in the first place. Instead, I pointed out something which was beginning to concern me anyway, "You need to eat soon."

Predictably, he shook his head in defiance. I can't say I truly blamed him - I didn't like being forced to eat this disgusting, toxic energon either, but he just refused to cooperate.

"You're not going to last much longer if you don't take in energy," I insisted though I didn't say what I was going to. Every Cybertronian with a working central processor knew that shutting down only recharged so much - we needed energon to keep up our strength. He didn't need me to remind him of that. I had been fine on the ship with simply recharging every few cycles since I wasn't burning much doing other activities, but once we crashed here and I was constantly having to either hunt or otherwise fend off the snakes, I needed a steady supply. He had been fine while he was in stasis since he was not awake to burn energy, but now that he was awake, he needed to compensate.

And he hadn't eaten since he finally awoke nearly an Earth week ago.

"I'm not ingesting that vile slag," he snapped back at me. "Kill yourself with it if you like, but I'd prefer not." All I could do was sigh in response. If only I could be certain he would be safe while I scouted further for other sources of energy.

"I'll be back soon," I told him after a breem or two of silence. I took my rifle from its place beside me and stood to leave the cave to hunt more of the serpents for today's energon supply as well as to be alone for a while. Starscream wasn't any better company awake than he was in stasis. I didn't expect any different, really, but that didn't lessen the disappointment. In fact, I'm not sure what I expected.

"Take me with you."

I know I didn't expect _that_.

"What?" I stared at him for a moment, positive I heard wrong. He just glared at me defiantly, his red optics cutting through the dimness of the cave.

"Take me with you - maybe I'll see something else you could use," he insisted. I didn't hesitate an astrosecond to shake my head and refuse.

"No - it's entirely too dangerous. These things are fast and numerous. I need both of my hands free." I knew he wouldn't like what I was going to say next, but it needed to be said if he was going to act like that. "Having to carry you would only slow me down and probably get both of us killed. Your null ray may work, and I can understand a soldier not liking to be confined, but I don't need the distraction of trying to keep you safe."

His glare heated slightly, but he just became more insistent. "Contrary to what rumors you may have heard, Autobot-" I hated the way he spat out the faction title like it was an expletive. "-I wasn't a soldier my whole life. I lived _before_ the war, and before I was a soldier, I was a scientist - an explorer. I've been to worlds like this before. If there's something else that can be used, I'll see it before you."

I'm not sure which surprised me more: his opening part of his past to me so willingly or the fact that he used to do something other than fight. It made me feel a little guilty as I realized that, over so many millennia of fighting, I had automatically assumed all of the Decepticons to be born killers and soldiers. Not once could I recall wondering what any of them may have been before the war. Deep down, I knew I knew better than to make such prejudicial assumptions, but I had those prejudices regardless. I too was something other than a soldier once, so it should not have surprised me so much that he used to be a scientist.

But I've been a soldier too long, and a soldier's mindset dies hard.

"I still can't risk it," I finally told him, ignoring how he seemed to crackle with anger at being denied. "If you were in better shape, maybe, but I'm responsible for you now. I wouldn't risk any of the Autobots in such a way either."

"Prime!" he yelled at my back when I turned to leave again.

"Optimus," I corrected him shortly. "I'm not Prime anymore, so you may as well quit calling me that." I certainly didn't feel like I deserved the title anymore, and I no longer had the Matrix of Leadership. That was, hopefully, still in Ultra Magnus' capable hands on Earth.

" _Prime_!"

I ignored his enraged shrieks and rolled the boulder back into place, leaving just enough space to allow him some light. I didn't want my paranoia to cause him to injure himself again as it had that first time after he awoke.

I had to admit I was very curious as to how the dark could cause such an intense panic attack in one so normally sure of himself as Starscream, but at the same time, I knew it was more than likely a touchy subject, not one he would delve into readily. Not to _me_ , anyway. I shook my head, deciding to not worry about him for now and focus on the task at hand.

The skeleton of the ship wasn't far away, stripped down to the bare wires and metal frame. The snakes were most numerous there since they were still working on what little was left of the ship, so that was my destination. The rock underfoot crushed and sent up a cloud of rusty dust with every step I took. The planet's suns shined painfully down on me, gleaming off my chassis so brightly I had to dim my working optic to keep the brightness from hurting. It was still only bearable, but I needed to be able to see the snakes when I found them.

It takes a lot to get me to truly dislike something, and I _hated_ this planet. I had to swerve for the colorful one on my inadequate charts, didn't I? Upon crashing, I sent out one final distress beacon through the void of space. I used every last drop of energy to make the signal dozens of times stronger than all the previous attempts in the hopes that it would carry through the void and finally be heard.

In hindsight, I should have used some of the remaining energy to convert into energon cubes, but I had no idea how difficult it would be to find usable sources of energy here, and I didn't have time to experiment before the serpents began eating the ship. We had been crashed for little over a cycle before the foul creatures appeared, chewing holes through the hull effortlessly. I barely had time to grab the energon converter and Starscream before the snakes began chewing on my feet. I had several attached to my ankles by the time I was able to escape and make my way up the cliffs where the snakes had more trouble following me. Those clamped onto me were already dead by then, but I was in too much of a rush to get away to shake them loose, and it's just as well that I did. It was after we had settled into the cave that I experimented with them and discovered I could make energon with their blood and organs thanks to a chemical in the snakes' bodies.

Contrary to what Starscream probably believed, I knew it was toxic as soon as I made the first cube. It was because of that fact that I avoided eating it for entirely too long - I was nearly deactivated from lack of energy dozens of orns after the crash because I didn't want to eat poison, but I knew I had to if we were both to survive this ordeal. The best I could do to counteract the toxins was to try to force it through my filters when I ate and then clean off the filters in the tiny stream nearby during one of my hunts.

I flinched and shot down at my feet when a painful bite tore me from my thoughts. This was close enough to the wreckage if the snakes slithering my way were any indication. I only needed a few, but I knew I was going to have to kill many more than that before I could escape again.

I really hated this planet.


	3. Chapter 3

I had a terrible, pounding headache which felt like Rumble worrying at the back of my cranial casing with his pile drivers, a headache that snaked its way down my neck, through my arm, and into my fingers whenever I moved my head even a fraction. The fact that the headache was so bad it completely drowned out the ache in my missing side was definitely not good. I didn't have to be medically trained to know it was a warning sign.

I needed energon, toxic or not.

Prime was tucked back in his spot in front of me to my left, his head lolled to the side as he recharged. I had to wonder if he had worried a comfortable aft-hole into that spot since that was the exact same place he dropped onto every single time he came back from hunting for the last three Earth weeks I had been out of stasis. I certainly felt like I'd made my own. After that initial panic attack in the dark about three weeks ago, I'd been afraid to move, not wanting to grind my mutilated side against the rocks again.

As the headache intensified, I finally came to the conclusion that it was probably time to take a chance.

No, not with that poison Prime kept ingesting. I was only going to resort to that if I exhausted all other options. No, I had to see what this planet was like - I _had_ to whether he liked it or not. Slag him and his paranoia. I'm a scientist - if either of us was going to find an alternative, it would be me.

Sure, on some level I actually...ugh - _appreciated_ his concern as well as the fact that he stopped long enough from fleeing Cybertron to grab me. After all, it's not like Megatron ever gave a flip about what happened to me. He wouldn't have spared a second glance at me, ignoring the fact that he was the one who damaged me so severely in the first place. I'm well aware of the rumors that circulated the entire Decepticon army - and possibly even the Autobot army - about relations between myself and Megatron, and I'm happy to confirm that that's all they were - _rumors_. The thought of myself with Megatron in such a way was sickening. Of course, there were also rumors about me, Skywarp, and Thundercracker. While much more plausible - not to mention appealing - those too were just rumors. There were also...well, suffice it to say rumors are funny things - according to said rumors, I was the whore of the Decepticon army. I find it very amusing that the only one I wasn't rumored to be with was actually the only one I _was_ involved with.

I don't doubt Prime heard the rumors. I'd be shocked if he hadn't. I'm sure the Autobots look down on such sordid activities since they put on a front of being so disgustingly benevolent and pure. I'm just lucky the rumors hadn't started until after I had increased my rank to second in command. Even the Decepticons looked down on those who used their bodies to advance. I suspect the rumors started out of spite, but since I was as high as I could go and couldn't be shot back down by anyone but Megatron himself, I had nothing to worry about when it came to a bunch of groundless rumors despite the fact that some Cybertronians would believe any rumor thrown their way. As naive as Prime seemed to be, I wouldn't have been surprised if he was one of them.

And yet, despite that and despite the fact that we had been fighting in the war for millions of years, he saved me. Thousands of Decepticons forsook and abandoned me, not even bothering to see whether or not I really was dead. One Autobot stopped. The irony was painful.

However, I was sick of it - he was taking his concern and paranoia too far. He wouldn't even carry me to the cave entrance and let me look out regardless of the fact that he left it wide open whenever he wasn't hunting. Probably because he was there to kill any snakes that tried to come in, but still. It was time to take matters into my own hands.

Well, hand.

Carefully, I slid down onto my right side, cringing at how the movement made my headache worse. I could deal with a headache though, and testing the way my body lay against the cave floor like this made me a little more optimistic. This might actually work.

It was an exhaustive process, but I managed to use my remaining hand and foot to drag myself along the cave floor, gripping at rocks and dents in the ground and using them as leverage to pull myself along my side, my foot pushing against those same rocks to lessen the strain on my shoulder. It made my side sore, but that was more an annoyance than something worth worrying about, and I was convinced at that point that my headache really couldn't get any worse. It took me the better part of five breems to get from my spot at the back of the cave to the entrance, and I'm amazed Prime didn't wake up considering how much noise I was making. Either he was well and truly exhausted or he just wasn't as light a sleeper as I initially thought.

Whatever the reason, it gave me the opportunity to finally drag myself to the entrance to the cave where I rolled onto my back and stared up at the sky for the first time once my head was outside.

Seeing the greenish-blue sky brought to mind something I had been wondering for the last two weeks - _why_ was the sun always shining? Not once had I seen nightfall through the cave opening. At first, I had written it off as I just happened to be in recharge during the night, but after three weeks, I realized no, there _was_ no night here. Now, that's not exactly an odd thing if a planet doesn't rotate, but since rotation is a very big factor in what makes and sustains a planet's atmosphere, life can't exist on such a planet. Nothing like the snakes, anyway, so there had to be another explanation.

Slowly setting across from me - upside down currently - were two explanations - two suns. A red one and a yellow one. That wasn't _entirely_ unusual - it certainly wasn't the first multiple-solar system in existence. If suns were small enough or distant enough or if the planet's atmosphere was protective enough against the radiation and heat, then life could still exist on a planet with multiple suns. There was just something about these two suns in particular that made me uneasy.

The dull ache in my tired shoulder subsiding, I dragged myself further out of the cave and to the left, using the rocks by the mouth of the cave to pull myself up onto my foot. I had to lean heavily against the rock wall, but it worked even if it left my wounded side uncomfortably exposed to the outside world.

Rock the same rusty red as the cave itself could be seen all the way to the horizon. It was relatively flat save for a few cracks in the ground where the snakes probably retreated when they got overheated, and I could see tiny spires of twisted, chewed metal sticking up over some rocks, all that was left of the ship we had crashed in. Prime wasn't exaggerating when he said the snakes ate it.

There was a tiny stream not too far away, probably only still in existence despite the suns because it was almost completely concealed by rock. Sunlight probably only touched the water for a breem at a time if that long. Good for the snakes, but water alone isn't an energy source. I had already determined the red rock was as worthless as it looked.

I glanced back at the suns which were steadily dropping below the horizon and felt a sense of dread hit me. There was something wrong here. Something very wrong.

I looked up above me at the rock wall and was pleased to note that the cave was very close to the top of the rocky cliffs. In fact, there were enough jutting rocks for me to climb up and at least poke my head over the top despite my condition. The throbbing in my head just made me worry if I had enough strength left for the effort.

There was no escaping it though - I had to try. Using the turbine in my foot to give me a boost, I started the long, painful, and arduous process of pulling myself up the uneven slope. It took nearly a cycle, and I was in agony by the time I was nearly there. I'd managed to scrape my bad side against some of the rocks, and my hand, knee, and right side were a mess of cuts from gripping and pulling at rocks sharper than I originally thought. I was almost there though, and while I may be many things, I'm not a quitter.

The suns were almost completely below the horizon behind me by the time I finally made it to the apex of the rocks, and I had to take a moment to rest as warnings started flashing in front of my optics. Had I stayed in the cave like a good little cripple, I may have lasted another week before running dangerously low on energy, but I'd burned all that spare energy in my determination to get over the Primus forsaken hill. I could hear Prime below me calling my name in a panic - it was about time he woke up and noticed I was gone. I was already here though, so I forced my head back up to complete the task I had set out to do even as I listened to Prime scrambling out of the cave below to find me. When I finally lifted my head again to view the other side, I wasn't pleased.

I'm not really sure what I expected. It looked exactly the same on this side as it did on the other except it wasn't as flat. Spires of rock reached up to the sky like fingers, clustered together in groups of five to eight all over the landscape. I could tell they were hollow from the holes in the sides and the very top of each spire. For an astrosecond, I was curious as to why they were hollow and what might possibly be inside. Only an astrosecond though because that's all it took for me to notice another problem.

A bright blue sun rose before me as the red and yellow suns set behind me. No wonder there was no night. I noticed something else rising with the blue sun, and the sense of dread grew. There was something very familiar about this. It wasn't until I looked back over my shoulder at the red and yellow suns and finally saw an ominous arch of space debris arcing over the suns that it hit me.

I knew this planet.

I _hated_ this planet.

All the planets in the galaxy, and Prime picked _this_ one to crash on.

"Oh no..." I muttered in spite of myself before my head fell forward, my optics shut off, and I blacked out from lack of energy.

When I woke up, nearly a full orn later according to my chronometer, I was back in the cave, lying on my back and staring up at the ceiling. Strangely, my headache was gone, and it shouldn't have been considering how low on energy I was when I blacked out. It didn't take me long to notice why though.

Prime, for once, was in a different spot - this time, he was parked a little closer to the cave entrance with his leg stretched across the width of the cave, no doubt so he'd wake up immediately if I tried anything again. A cable snaked its way from his chest to mine, and, muddled as I was from blacking out, it took me a little longer than it normally would have to realize what he was doing.

Once I did though, I grabbed the cable and jerked it out of me, closing the connection. I was not so helpless that I needed to siphon his energy, blacking out from overexertion aside. Stupid, self-sacrificing moron. It took more effort than I would have liked to push myself back up into a sitting position against the wall, wriggling my aft back into the spot I had indeed worn into the ground.

Sensing the severing of the connection, he lifted - no, forced - his head up and looked at me, his working optic flickering a little. One hand rolled up the cable and placed it back inside himself while his other hand fed himself an energon cube to try to compensate for what I'd taken. He didn't say anything for a while, either too exhausted, too angry, or both to even try to form the words.

So, loudmouth that I am, I broke the silence.

"Even an evacuation pod that old should have had warnings in the system about this planet being off limits," I snapped though it didn't come out as heated as I would have liked. He just stared at me, and I couldn't tell if he was confused or if he had even heard me at all.

"What do you mean?" he finally croaked after what I said managed to register. "Why did you do that? I told you it's too dangerous..."

"I didn't get eaten, did I?" I grumbled in response before shaking my head and changing the subject. "I told you - I was an explorer and a scientist before the war. I've been to this planet before - I left explicit instructions when I got back to Cybertron that every single star chart on the planet, no matter how seemingly insignificant and unused, mark this planet off limits. Even _you_ had to have seen the warning in the computers!"

He sighed and shuffled back over to his usual spot, convinced I wasn't going anywhere this time. "There were even more warnings on the grey planet, and the other was a gas giant - nothing to land on. We weren't in range with the brown one that didn't have warnings assigned to it."

I'd forgotten about the grey one. I had more warnings assigned to it for a good reason. Still, both were hateful chunks of space debris.

"If you've been here before, why didn't you say so earlier?" he asked. I almost spat back at him that it was because he refused to let me see outside the slagging cave, but then I remembered the snakes. He must have assumed I would have recognized them.

"It's been millions of years, Prime - those snakes must have evolved here during that time. They weren't here when I mapped this planet." He nodded at that and fell quiet.

Angry and upset, I just shut off my optics and rubbed my forehead for a moment, this headache caused from anger rather than low energy. "The rings," I finally said, surprised at how level and quiet my voice was. Prime gave me a confused glance. "How long have the rings of the gas giant been on the horizon? The one with the two suns."

He was quiet as he thought about that, and I knew he was curious as to where I was going with this. "A week, almost," he finally answered, tilting his head at the defeated sigh I gave.

"Give it another week, and this planet will be thrown into a pitch black night lasting a year," I told him. He wasn't concerned. Yet.

"I can see in the dark even with just one optic."

"That's not the point. The snakes aren't the only predators here unless the things that killed my partner at the time have evolved out of the food chain." He was staring at me intently and, I suspect, worriedly. "There were creatures here that could fly, and they only came out when it was dark because light in any form burned them. They were like the snakes - they could eat anything."

"How are you so sure about the darkness though?" I knew he didn't doubt what I was saying - he just wanted to know for himself.

"While we were here, we determined that the planets and the suns form a line every few years - our estimate was half a vorn. The gas giant blocks off the red and yellow suns, and the grey planet blocks the blue sun. It causes a full, planetary eclipse for at least a year."

Silence passed between us for a long time after that. He was trying to cope with what I told him while I set myself to thinking, staring down at the cave floor in thought.

"And I didn't think I could hate this planet any more than I already did..."

I had to grin at that simply because that was _exactly_ what I thought so many millions of years ago the last time I was here. Dark humor and all.

"We might be able to use it though," I offered. He was instantly listening, watching me. "If the flying creatures haven't evolved out of existence, I assume the snakes branched off from them - they may have the same chemical in their bodies that the converter's able to use to make energon."

"What about the toxin that corrupts the energon? If they're related, the flying ones probably have it too."

"There's no guarantee they don't either. And even if they do, it might be in smaller amounts." Prime nodded, liking where I was going with this train of thought and likely seeing what I meant - smaller amounts of the toxins we could develop an immunity to over time. The energon he made now was just too corrupted. "The only problem is they're dangerous, most likely even more so than the snakes. And they fly, so they could get in here more easily than the snakes unless you leave the rock in front of the entrance the whole time."

"There's also the problem of it being dark," he pointed out. I'd hoped he wouldn't point that out. I commended him for not asking for an explanation at any point since it happened, but I really wished he hadn't brought it up. "I can use my headlights from my alt form while I'm here - they don't burn enough energy to worry about - but there's no light source for when I'm hunting."

"I'll live," I grumbled. He clearly didn't like that any more than I did, but truthfully, there was no alternative. Even he had to admit defeat there.

He started quietly laughing after a moment which caught me by surprise. What was so funny? I immediately took offense out of habit, puffing up defensively as I demanded, "What's so funny?"

It took him a moment to respond, neither malice nor condescending contempt in his expression as there would have been in Megatron's. "It's just this is the longest conversation we've ever had," he finally answered before chuckling again.

That surprised me. Both because he felt the need to point it out and because it was true. Talking was never a popular pastime among Decepticons - not talking just for the sake of conversation, anyway. Sure, there were some who talked all the time probably because they liked the sound of their own voices. Ask any Decepticon, and they'll probably tell you I'm the same way though that couldn't be further from the truth. Contrary to popular belief, I despise my voice. I inwardly cringe every time I hear myself, and many times, I wished I could get a new vocal processor for a better voice. I almost did too, on Cybertron before the war, but Skyfire talked me out of it, saying it would change me too much.

But Prime was right - we'd never done anything more than exchange insults and battle cries before, and even after I came out of stasis, I still kept my mouth shut most of the time more out of habit than contempt. Except around Megatron, Skywarp, and Thundercracker, I didn't talk much. I might have around Soundwave, but I didn't _need_ to - slagger could read my mind, after all. I had a feeling Prime was used to being around others more talkative than I.

"I'm sorry - I shouldn't have said that, should I?" he said after I stayed quiet for a while.

And I was probably right.

"I'm...not used to conversation," I reluctantly admitted. I wouldn't even call what we'd been talking about a true conversation, to be honest. I would have called it a strategy meeting.

"Normally, I'm not either," he admitted. "I kept my office quiet so I could hear myself think, and I spent dozens of cycles at a time there. Still, when I could get away, it was nice to have someone to talk to." He looked away then, his voice trailing off as his optic dimmed, probably thinking about Cybertron. It was hard not to even if I didn't care on as many levels as he did. I only lost Skywarp and Thundercracker who were already dead before they were ejected from Astrotrain - he lost the entire Autobot army.

I looked away as well, studying the rock wall for probably the millionth time since I came out of stasis. "I wouldn't know." What was I supposed to say? Did I not just tell him I'm bad at conversation? He didn't seem to want to push the subject anyway, staring outside forlornly, probably reminiscing. It was that observation that made me realize exactly why he was so paranoid about keeping me in this Primus forsaken cave and as far away from the snakes and any other dangers lurking around the corner.

He was afraid of being left alone.

Given the circumstances, stranded on a dustball planet surrounded by sharp-toothed monsters that could eat literally anything with no way of escaping, I can't say that I'd be too thrilled about being all by myself either. But I was still used to solitude, often spending days brooding in my quarters - or the brig, depending on Megatron's mood - rarely interacting with anyone with the occasional exception of Skywarp and Thundercracker when they invited me to one of their little "parties". Even before then, I spent countless cycles alone in my work as a scientist with only Skyfire calling me every so often to check my progress in my many, many experiments. I just don't do well with others.

Prime _wasn't_ accustomed to that though. He was used to having someone depend on him just as I was used to not being so helpless. The Decepticon in me found the notion of fear of being alone absurd and laughable. The scientist in me couldn't blame him. Maybe in another life, I could have been the same way. A disturbing thought, but a curious one nonetheless.

That did it - I needed to get my mind on something else.

"Come here," I snapped, earning a startled and confused look from him. He crawled over to me anyway though, just as naive and unsuspecting as ever. Once beside me on my left, I made a motion with my hand. "Turn around." Once again, he obediently and unquestioningly did as he was told despite the confused expression he gave me. Oh, if only he knew.

Pity he didn't. It gave me just the right opportunity and leverage to grab him by the right side of his head and smash the left side into the rock wall.

I almost laughed at the startled and pained howl that echoed through the cave - _almost_. What _did_ get me to laugh were the foul Cybertronian oaths he swore at me as he scrambled back away, cradling the left side of his head. I honestly hadn't expected him to have that foul a mouth - he could have made even Dirge stop and stare with some of the phrases he snapped at me. Granted, I _did_ deserve it...

"What was that for?!" he demanded furiously.

"It was annoying me," I replied calmly, favoring him with an amused grin which just grew wider when he blinked a few times and jumped, startled upon finally noticing he could see with his left optic again. "No pain, no gain, as the humans you like so much say."

"...you could have warned me." A sulky Optimus Prime is a very, very amusing thing, and I couldn't hold back my laughter anymore, laughing until my torn side ached. The more he pouted, the harder I laughed until it finally hurt too much to keep it up, and I trailed off into a fit of Skywarp-esque giggles before finally regaining some semblance of composure.

The offended glare he was giving me almost made me start again.

"What?" I asked defensively on the pretense of being offended by his unthankful attitude. It might have worked better if I could have wiped the grin off my face. "You'd rather be stuck with just one working optic for who knows how long?"

"You very well could have done even more damage!"

"Would _I_ do _that_?" I couldn't help snickering.

Obviously deciding that I wasn't going to feel sorry for my actions no matter how much he tried to guilt trip me, he crossed his arms over his chest and looked away, still sulking even as he asked, "How'd you know that would fix it?"

I stretched out my leg in an attempt to make myself more comfortable. "When you get thrashed around on a near daily basis, you tend to learn what parts shake around in what way inside you given the right strength and angle applied." I frowned when I was finished with that statement. I hadn't actually meant to say that, but it just slipped out, and I flinched when I noticed he had stopped sulking and was looking at me with what looked annoyingly like pity.

I didn't want his pity.

I told him as much, and he looked down at his lap. That didn't work as well as I'd hoped - his pity had just grown. "What would _you_ have done to an insubordinate trying to overthrow you every chance he got?" I demanded. His pity bothered me - I didn't need nor want his pity. I didn't want to explain myself either, but I wanted his pity even less.

He actually thought about that for a moment rather than throwing in my face the fact that I had more or less asked for it. Some part of me wanted him to, wanted him to quit being so...so infuriatingly _good_. Everybody has flaws - I knew he had to have some of his own. Nobody's perfect.

"I'd...probably let him try to prove himself, and if he could really do a better job than I..." he finally answered, his tone uneasy and trailing off. He'd never had to think about anything like that before. The Autobots all followed him so blindly.

"Then you're just as unimaginative and boring as you're rumored to be," I scoffed. "You really wouldn't fight to protect your position?"

This time, he was the one who became defensive. "I wasn't always a soldier either, Starscream. Nor was I a scientist or an explorer or anything else glamorous. Before I was Prime, I was just a dockworker...an ordinary Cybertronian with an ordinary job and an ordinary name. Sometimes, I wish I could be just that again and leave this whole, pointless war behind me. So no, I wouldn't fight to protect my position. I fight because I _have_ to, because I don't want anyone else to throw their lives away, not for power."

Okay, I asked for that.

I was in the process of trying to come up with a response when he continued, "Megatron is power hungry - that's all he cares about, and I suspect that tainted the Decepticons...isn't that all the Decepticons want?"

My turn to be defensive. "On some level, yes, but you forget that we have the same goal in mind - we just go about it differently than you. The Autobots do it diplomatically, the Decepticons militarily. Megatron's become so obsessed with defeating you and the Autobots, the war is more about the personal vendetta between the two of you than it is about what the war is _supposed_ to be about - restoring Cybertron to its former glory!" I stopped there. I could have preached on and on, but...there wasn't any point anymore, was there? Cybertron was nothing but debris. No amount of energon could restore it now... "And this argument is pointless," I stated, sinking back against the wall and letting my annoyance filter out through my vent. He didn't need to question why.

"I hate to admit it, but you're right," he sighed and leaned his head back to stare up at the ceiling of the cave. "Even though Cybertron is gone, Megatron won't let the war end...not as long as either of us is alive."

"It doesn't make any difference now. Look where we are. And here we'll stay likely until we both shut down and never wake up again." His pained expression told me he wanted to argue that, wanted to believe in that flimsy Autobot concept they call hope, but even he had to admit I was right to be pessimistic and that he was only deluding himself if he didn't allow reality to set in.

"Theoretically," he said after a while, startling me where I was almost in recharge. "Theoretically...if we were found. If we were rescued..." He took a moment to figure out how he wanted to word his next question. "Would you return to the way things were?"

It wasn't the best way he could have worded it, but I knew what he meant, and I thought about it long and hard. First on my agenda, after restoring my body, of course, would be to get revenge on Megatron for the state he left me in for the last quarter of a vorn. After that though? I really had no idea. Without Cybertron, there was no point in fighting the Autobots anymore even if the two factions never saw anything the same way. We'd probably go our separate ways to find new planets to call home. Autotron and Deceptitron - just the thought almost made me snicker. However, the majority of the Decepticons would be just the same way as they were before the destruction of Cybertron - slathering, power hungry wolves. I estimated it was only because of Megatron's stubbornness that we had lasted so many millions of years in the first place. Of course, I didn't expect to be defeated too easily either and pictured myself leading the Decepticons for a long time.

Of course, it then registered that there most likely were no Decepticons left. Save for the occasional spy here and there on Earth, the Decepticons had held complete control over Cybertron, and that was where they all were. Sure, Prime and I had managed to escape from Cybertron itself, but admittedly, we were lucky. As he said, Unicron tried to devour every single evacuation ship as dessert. Not many survivors of the initial destruction could have survived that as well.

No, the Decepticon faction was as good as dead. The Autobots still had forces left on Earth though, forces with which to find a new home. Even if it meant being a prisoner due to war crimes, it had to be better than being dead or fighting the continuation of a dead war sure to fail. I'm ambitious and greedy and possibly immature, but I'm not stupid.

"No, Prime," I finally answered. "I don't think I would."

We didn't exchange another word for the rest of the day.

One week later, darkness descended on the planet.


	4. Chapter 4

I tried to concentrate on something other than the noises, other than Starscream's work, other than our situation. Anything else. My chewed up arm was as good a distraction as any, and it needed to be fixed anyway. Self repairs would only do so much without a little incentive and manual repairs of my own.

I hated the fact that I once again jumped upon hearing the warbling, keening cries of the awful flying creatures outside. The sound could be considered musical if it came from a more pleasant beast. Starscream wasn't exaggerating when he spoke of them only a week ago. Even with both my optics fully functional again and my night vision enabled, it was very hard to see them, and there were so _many_...

When the planetary eclipse started, I was already outside, the boulder settled in front of the cave save for a small crack for the last of the light to keep Starscream from panicking. I stood vigilant atop the cliffs above the cave, watching the gas giant ascend in the horizon with my rifle ready in my hands in front of me. The rings arced high in the sky, so high I had to crane my neck back to see the curve. I couldn't help myself - I locked away the image in a part of my memory block, finding it very beautiful as the rings made the light from the yellow sun dance over the landscape. You just don't see anything like this on Cybertron or Earth. It's as captivating as it is ominous.

  
  
Art by [Shibara](http://shibara.tumblr.com/)  


The grey planet already concealed the blue sun behind me, and the yellow sun was about to disappear behind the gas giant, leaving the planet bathed in red light for nearly a cycle before its light too was broken up by the gas giant's rings. As an eerie dusk began to darken the planet, I heard a strange noise that made me turn away from the disappearing suns, turning instead to where the blue sun once was.

It's hard to describe the sound they made - an almost musical crow that wafted into the air from the spires in the distance. They were already shadowed, and the darkness was growing by the astrosecond, so I switched my optics to night vision in preparation. We only needed one of these new creatures to complete our experiment to see if we could use them instead of the snakes.

Why is it that _nothing_ is ever easy?

At first, it looked as if there was a single, enormous version of the snakes extending its head from each spire. It wasn't until the "head" started to spread that I realized it wasn't one creature but a cloud of many, hundreds erupting from each spire and pinwheeling into the dark sky. It was impossible to count them, and I took a step back unconsciously when I realized this. There were so many more of these creatures than there were the snakes I had been hunting, it was shocking, and I must have just stood there and stared stupidly for nearly a breem before I was brought out of my shock by a tiny sliver of light that streaked over the landscape before the red sun disappeared completely behind the gas giant and plunged the planet into a pitch black darkness in which I was only spared by my night vision.

I don't know what I would have done without the ability to see in that total darkness - been killed, probably. How fast those awful creatures descended upon me was stunning - before I knew it, there were at least a dozen latched onto me, trying to chew through my armor. I fired blindly in a moment of panic before activating the headlights in my chassis from my alt form. The screech of pain from the monsters was deafening as they bolted away from me, some tumbling from the air in a writhing mass of smoke as the light scorched their skin.

Still panicked and startled, I spun in a circle several times to try to make myself a perimeter as well as shake loose those still clawing at my back. Two larger creatures lunged at my right arm and made short work of shredding it before I was able to shoot them both and snatch them by their tails. At a safe distance from my lights, I could see more of the foul beasts killing and devouring the snakes, and some were even devouring each other. On a planet so lifeless otherwise, I was amazed that these creatures had not completely eradicated themselves while hiding underground away from the suns. Unless there were other beasts lurking underground. That thought was not at all appealing.

Making my way back to the cave without tripping on the slope was tricky, but I was determined enough to keep the beasts away to manage it. I kept turning slow circles to make sure they kept their distance on all sides, but they followed me with every step I took, keeping a tight circle around me. I don't think I have ever before felt so vulnerable or desperate, and I was immensely relieved when I was finally able to press my back to the rock so I didn't have to continue turning.

It was then that I heard a scraping noise and looked to my right to see two of the beasts clawing at the boulder blocking off the cave, trying to dig through the small crack I had left. Bright flashes made them flinch back repeatedly as, I assume, Starscream fired his null ray at the boulder to keep them away. Either that or to make himself some light. Or both.

The beasts fled my own light once I was close enough, and I called to Starscream to make sure he stopped firing while I was trying to get back inside. Being hit by his null ray while I was outside with these ravenous monsters was the last thing I wanted. It took several excruciatingly long and careful moments to ease back the boulder enough for me to get back inside while making sure I didn't let any of the monsters in as well. In order to do so, I had to keep my back to the boulder which just made the task even harder, but I finally managed to toss the two dead beasts at Starscream and close off the entrance, blocking us from the outside world.

That was two full cycles ago. My headlights were still on to give Starscream light as he worked with the bodies of the monsters and the energon converter. I didn't want to distract him since he was working with such focus, and I didn't really need to ask him what he was doing anyway. He was trying different body parts at a time, the brain first, then the blood, making one cube out of each part, and he was waiting for the results for the final component in the first creature, its bones.

A bright flash and a small explosion against the boulder covering the cave entrance told me everything I needed to know since five previous cubes had met the same fate. It was toxic no matter what body part he used.

"Is it still better than the snakes?" I asked when he furiously kicked away the second creature's body and rubbed his face wearily.

"It's worse," he growled. "Ingest one made from these things, and I don't know what will happen, but it'll be worse than hand tremors."

I thought back to what I had seen - how the flying beasts were killing every single snake they could find as well as each other. By now, there may not have been any snakes left in the area.

"What are we going to do?" I really shouldn't have asked that. Neither of us knew. We had been focused on the hope that the new creatures would make less poisonous energon than the snakes, so we had not had a contingency plan.

At least he didn't snap at me for asking it, a testament to how tired he was as well. He just leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling of the cave, lost in thought for quite a while.

I looked back down at my arm and gave a small shudder; I was still amazed at the amount of damage those awful things had done in less than a moment. Most of the outer plating was gone from my shoulder all the way to the tips of my fingers. It looked grisly, but, thankfully, it didn't hurt nearly as much as it looked like it should. Still, I worked to kickstart my internal repair systems to close off the wounds, not wanting dirt to get into my wiring.

"Hook it up to me," Starscream finally spoke after nearly another cycle. I looked up from where my arm was almost closed up with thin, emergency sheeting, confused. "The converter," he clarified. "Hook it up to me."

I couldn't imagine why he wanted me to do that. Actually, I could, and I didn't like the conclusion I came to and had no problem telling him just that.

"No. That's not only contradictory to what we're trying to do, it's also dangerous given your condition."

"Don't be stupid," he scoffed. "I'm not going to siphon my own energy. Energy and biofield spikes can provide just enough power to fill a cube. Now hook the slagging thing up to me."

I knew what he was saying, but it still took me a moment to truly _accept_ it even as I did as he told me, connecting him to the energon converter through a hole in the glass of his cockpit. "Spikes...?" I repeated stupidly as he turned on the converter and made a cube to fill. Surely, he wasn't serious or at least didn't mean what I thought he meant.

"You know what I mean," he grumbled, raising his hand to his throat where his fingers began to manipulate the sensitive plating around his throat. Okay, he _was_ serious. "Systemic overload through either interfacing or intense pain is the highest concentration of energy we can release with our own bodies short of siphoning," he clarified even though I wasn't quite listening at that point. "I ought to be able to make two or three before I get too tired."

"Y-You're not suggesting..." I trailed off, hoping he wasn't. To be honest, I'm not sure if I was disappointed or relieved when he snorted in response.

"No, I wouldn't _dare_ presume to ask the High and Mighty Optimus Prime to do such a thing to a lowly Decepticon." The sarcasm was sharp enough to cut. "I have one hand left - I can use it." At my stupefied stare, he stopped his ministrations long enough to return the expression of incredulity. "Don't tell me you've never heard of self-stimulation."

I tried to look offended when, in fact...no, I _hadn't_ ever heard of that before. I'd never known such a thing was possible - to send oneself into sensory overload without a partner? I mentally swatted myself for the thought that bubbled into being that only Starscream could have thought of such a thing. "But..." I started then trailed off again, not sure what I was going to say anyway. I didn't quite want to believe what he was proposing he do, but as he then pointed out:

"Do you have any better ideas?" he snapped, making me flinch in spite of myself. I didn't, and he knew it, so he didn't wait for an answer, concentrating on fondling his own throat, trailing his fingers over plates and cables I knew had to be sensitive to that kind of touch if they were anything like my own. "I need you to watch the converter and switch out cubes when they fill up - we can worry about actually converting them later." He caught my pensive, and probably embarrassed, expression and glared at me. "Either shut up and concentrate on the converter or quit acting like a wibbling idiot and help me out. I can't do this very quickly with just one hand." That snapped me out of my shocked stupor, and I meekly dragged the energon converter over to me and turned my back to him.

Wibbling idiot? I wanted to be offended, but I couldn't be - the vocabulary reminded me too much of the twins. He had a point even though I was still reeling from the fact that he'd even thought of it, much less was doing it. The energon made from such a comparatively weaker source of energy wouldn't be very strong, but at least it wouldn't be toxic, and even if he could only make two, it would only take one to get his own energy back up, so we would still be able to profit from it.

That didn't make it any less wrong that I was witnessing it though. Systemic overload is something which should be shared only with one you trust, and I knew he didn't trust me even after all this time. He trusted me enough to check his gruesome wounds, but that was it. What he was doing was special, it was _private_ , it was...

...actually working.

The tiny sparks dancing inside the cube and mocking my embarrassment were proof of that. It was far from usable, but he seemed to be determined to make it work. I just wished I could turn off my audio receptors as easily as I could my optics.

Since the cube was filling slowly, I tried to find something else to concentrate on other than what he was doing right behind me. I dragged the still intact corpse of the second creature over to me to examine it since I hadn't had a chance while fleeing them earlier and had busied myself with my arm afterward.

It looked a lot like the snakes, confirming Starscream's theory that the snakes had evolved from the flying beasts. Its mouth was nearly identical though it split into five wedges instead of six to form a gruesome star, each still rowed with dozens upon dozens of razor sharp teeth. It had no eyes that I could find and probably saw using some sort of sound generation which would explain the crooning noise they made.

It had two sets of wings; the two closer to its shoulders were nearly as long as my arm with very few bones just along the top ridge. The rest of the wing was nothing but thick, leathery skin and muscle. The two wings below those were the exact same but only half as long. It amazed me that they could fly with such strange, primitive wings that seemed to be so limited in range of movement, but alien life never ceases to defy expectations, especially those of a non-explorer like myself who wasn't accustomed to discovering new forms of life.

I jumped and swore inwardly when Starscream's vents hissed to life behind me to cool his systems. I had almost forgotten what he was doing in my scrutinizing of the monster. Since I was distracted anyway, I took the opportunity to check on the energon cube and was surprised to see that it was already full. Quickly switching it with an empty one to resume the process, I held up the full one to examine the energy dancing inside it. It was a bright blue lightning, not unlike the sparks that danced over one's body after overload which I supposed made sense considering what he was doing to make it.

Slag me - I had to think about that, didn't I?

I shook my head and returned to examining the flying creature, quickly deciding that I needed to think of something to call it other than "flying creature" or any other incarnation - the snakes were easy to refer to; these things were not unless I named them myself. I wanted to ask Starscream if he had assigned a name to them when he originally surveyed the planet, but that would require interrupting him and possibly turning around to face him, so I would think of my own name for them if only temporarily.

Its tail was long enough to wrap around my leg twice, and it had no back legs, only two tiny arms placed near where I assumed its chest was, bearing on each hand three claws as long as my own fingers. Unlike the snakes whose heads were rounded and undecorated, these beasts had bony crests at the base of their skull. I couldn't see any practical use for them unless they acted to reduce wind resistance when they flew. All of these observations brought to mind something I had seen in the folklore of Earth so many years ago - a mythical creature with bony, webbed wings, a serpentine body, no back legs, and two small arms. The images I remembered were only barely similar, but they were similar enough for me to decide to, at least for now, refer to these beasts as wyrms.

Unfortunately, deciding on the name meant I no longer had a distraction.

I idly ran my fingers over the new, thin plating covering the wounds on my arm, noting how sensitive it was which was understandable. It felt as if my fingers were brushing across the circuitry directly. Emergency plating was much, much thinner than normal covering, designed to close wounds during times of crisis and nothing more - just long enough to keep vital circuitry covered from the elements and further injury until someone medically trained could be reached to fully repair the wounds. Unfortunately, we had no such facilities, so the emergency plating was going to be permanent for as long as we remained on this Primus forsaken planet. Considering how much of it now covered my arm, it didn't bode well. I would possibly lose function of my arm if it sustained further damage. As long as we didn't have to go back outside for any reason and face the wyrms, I would be okay, but a year is too long to plan ahead so far when there are so many unpredictable factors.

I looked up at the cave ceiling to watch how the shadows cast by my headlights played along the rock, thinking about that. If this really did turn out to be the only way we could make the non-toxic energon we needed to survive, I couldn't stay embarrassed about it forever, and a more rational part of me pointed out that, if that was the case, I also couldn't expect Starscream to be the only one to do all the work making it. That thought made me even more embarrassed and almost disgusted. The disgust was what surprised me. I expected the embarrassment, possibly even humiliation, at the thought of trying to stimulate myself into overload, but the disgust was surprising. I suppose it was the thought of him watching and listening to me. At least I wasn't _watching_ him even if I could still hear him.

It was then that I realized I hadn't actually _heard_ much, and that realization derailed my train of thought yet again. For one so outspoken and...well, screechy all the time, he was being extremely quiet, especially considering what he was doing. I took a moment to switch the second cube for a new empty one before I let my curiosity get the better of me and glanced over my shoulder.

If his silence had bestowed upon me any doubts that he really was doing what he said he would, the expression on his face quickly dissipated them. His optics were dim, his head tilted back to rest against the cave wall, his mouth was open as if he wanted to make some noise of pleasure but couldn't, and he looked to be in complete ecstasy. His hand was busy tracing his fingers over something inside a crevice in his armor, the junction between his thigh and pelvic armor. I couldn't imagine what it was, but every time he touched it, a shudder coursed through him, his hips squirming on the ground in an attempt to make it more accessible. Whatever he was manipulating was extremely sensitive. His vent was working hard to keep his systems cool, what remained of the other vent sputtering pitifully in its attempt to do its share. Embarrassed though I was, I was also...intrigued.

He wasn't involving his spark at all, and that was very interesting. That was probably why I had never heard of self-stimulation before - the fact that he was able to gradually bring himself to overload with only touch was unheard of among Autobots, not just to me. Stimulating the right cables, circuits, and plating was only a precursor, what humans called foreplay, but what brought us to true sensory overload was the joining of two lovers' spark energy, something which could not be experienced alone.

I couldn't help myself at that point, too curious and intrigued - I watched his hand as he continued to toy with whatever was so sensitive in his leg, watched how it made his whole body quiver. His hand reluctantly left his leg and went up to the intake on his chest, fingers tracing around the edge before his hand went back to his throat, fingers twisting a wire that made him jerk in response. I could tell he didn't have much control over his hand at this point considering the way his fingers were trembling, marking how close he was as he moved it back down to that spot in his leg. It only took a moment longer for his whole body to seize up in overload - his back bowed, sparks of blue danced over the exposed circuitry in his side, and he shuddered convulsively for several moments, his leg and hand jerking together as he rode out the sensations, trying, probably unconsciously, to draw it out as long as he could, and, curiously, not once during the entire sequence did he make a sound.

I looked away when he finally slumped back against the cave wall, quivering from aftershocks. I felt filthy for watching something which was supposed to be private, but I couldn't find my voice to apologize for it - all I could do was look away. I was shocked to see that the third energon cube had already been completely filled, primarily by the sensory overload. It was still strange that such an act could possibly save us or at least hold us over until the suns rose again.

"How many?" he croaked once he was coherent enough to speak, probably still too tired to ask the whole question though I knew what he meant.

"Three," I answered. How convenient that my voice now decided to work. I didn't look at him when he sighed disappointedly, instead busying myself removing the third cube and placing it with the first two. I couldn't shake the shame I felt for watching when I could have easily looked away, but at the same time, I also couldn't shake the curiosity and intrigue that stemmed from watching. Such a powerful overload just from touch...it was unfathomable, yet he had just managed it - I had the proof in front of me flickering inside the third cube, and staring at it, I couldn't help but wonder if I could do that.

The thought was embarrassing and shameful, but I wondered it nonetheless and even found myself trying to think of how best to do it. Curiosity is sometimes a very bad thing.

The converter had automatically made a fourth cube to fill, and I jumped when I noticed a blue spark flickering in it. I looked sharply back to Starscream to see his fingers digging back into that junction in his leg. He was exhausted, but he was trying to do it again, not satisfied with the small number he had made.

"Stop that!" I snapped, appalled, and reached forward to jerk the cable out of him. I earned a surprised and stupefied stare from him. It was vaguely reminiscent of the first day he had awakened when I had offered him the first energon cube and he stared at me as if I was crazy for not taking it for myself. "You're weak enough - if you try that again before recovering, you could do permanent damage to yourself."

"It needs to be done," he countered heatedly. "We're both way too low - three isn't enough, especially since it's going to be low quality anyway."

"Then I'll do it." That completely slipped out without warning, but I couldn't take it back. Besides, it was the truth. I hated it, but it was only fair - I couldn't expect him to do everything, especially in his condition, and, after all, I had watched him. It was only fair that I reciprocated.

And I was still curious as to whether or not I could do the same thing.

He gave me a look which I could only assume was shock, but he didn't say anything as I moved the energon converter over to him so he could switch out the cubes. I couldn't bring myself to look at him anymore as I pulled open my access panel in my torso just below my chest plate and hooked myself up to the converter and fidgeted from embarrassment, still trying to figure out how best to go about something I had no idea was even possible before then.

Sighing inwardly, I tried to just swallow my pride and stared off to the side, finding a very interesting patch of rock to analyze as my right hand drifted up to my still intact antenna, thinking of the areas that had felt best when stimulated by others in the past. While I certainly had not been with as many as Starscream probably had, if rumors could be believed at all, I had still been with a few very skilled Cybertronians who had mapped out my pleasure points to find the places that made me squirm the most. I just had to remember where they were for myself-

There it was.

I quickly shut off my vocal processor before any noise could escape my throat. I was embarrassed enough about this, and while Starscream was disturbingly quiet during his sequence, I...well, I'm loud. Loud enough that about seven members of the Autobot army once broke into my quarters thinking I was being murdered only to find an infuriatingly amused Jazz on top of me with his hands inside my chassis. Slag him for being such a tease. I briefly wondered if Starscream had done the same and that was why he had been so quiet, but my fingers found that spot on my antenna again, and I couldn't be bothered to think about that anymore.

I shut off my optics in a feeble attempt to pretend I was alone as signals sent to my central processor began to heat my body, gears and cables beginning to hum in vibration. I'm not sure which surprised me more - the fact that it was working or the fact that I was aroused so quickly. Then again, my antennae had always been one of the more sensitive parts of my body, that and a bundle of wires behind my pelvic armor. At least the sensitivity of my antennae made sense - they had to be to analyze and receive airborne communications and other environmental changes though I was not nearly as proficient at the task as Jazz and Prowl. The wires in my pelvic area were probably sensitive because they were so rarely exposed.

I'm not quite sure when I quit acting like a "wibbling idiot" and finally allowed myself to relax enough to _enjoy_ what I was doing. I momentarily completely forgot about where I was and who I was with and focused instead on old memories of Jazz's claws in my chest strumming various wires I didn't even know I had at the time just to see how much he could get me to squirm. He could be downright infuriating when he tried, but then he'd dig a claw underneath a panel, and I'd stop caring. I think I bucked his smaller frame right off of me a few times, but he never complained. In fact, I think it just amused him more.

Since I was already delving into the land of memories, I dug further back to a time before we knew Earth existed, and I found one of my favorite memories of Elita-1. We were just friends for the most part - it was a coupling of convenience fueled only by lust, but we neither complained nor regretted it. She had talented hands too, and just like Jazz, she seemed to get some sort of sadistic pleasure out of seeing how much she could get me to squirm. Her favorite area to tease me was that bundle of wires in my pelvic area, and I remember how she used to take each one between her slender fingers and stroke every visible part from top to bottom.

I was startled out of my reminiscing when my whole body began to shake. My optics flickered, and I could feel a swell of energy in my chest coming from my spark chamber as it tried to send out a pulse to a lover who wasn't there. With my chest closed though, the pulse had nowhere to go but back inside me, dispersing through every wire and circuit in my body, and just as the first faded, that sent me into an immediate second overload which made me lose my grip on my vocalizer, and I let out a choked scream that echoed through the cave.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to quit trembling and stop staring blankly at the wall in front of me, my vents and the smokestacks on my shoulders working hard to cool my overheated systems. When I finally tore my gaze from the rock, humiliation washed over me anew as I looked down to find my hand still inside my pelvic armor. I had wrenched the right side loose while I was lost in memories and sensations. Mortified, I quickly closed it and latched it shut then just sat staring at my hands in my lap for a while. I had never done such a thing before, and it was humiliating not only to know I had an audience for it but also to have overloaded myself _twice_ doing it, and much as I wanted to, I couldn't deny that I'd enjoyed it immensely. A greater sense of shame came over me when I realized the fact that I _did_ have an audience was actually a little arousing. Still, I couldn't bring myself to look up from my lap - I didn't want to see if he had watched the whole thing or minded his own business.

A small energon cube dropped into my lap and tore my attention from my embarrassment, and I reluctantly glanced over to my right to see him work on converting a third cube with the machine, the second already processed cube in his mouth where he was sucking it for all he was worth to ingest every last drop of energon. It was stupid to feel a little better just because he wasn't looking at me, but I did anyway. I made short work of the cube he passed me and let my head roll back to rest against the cavern wall with a relieved sigh as I felt the non-toxic energy spread through my systems. I hadn't had non-toxic energon in far too long, and I'd nearly forgotten how good it felt, much better than the way the wyrm-made energon burned my piping and made me twitch all over. It wasn't the best quality, but it would do nicely.

"How many?" I finally had the nerve to ask, keeping my gaze on the rocky ceiling. The embarrassment was returning now that I was somewhat re-energized, and once again, I couldn't bring myself to look at him.

"Six," he answered after he was satisfied the cube he had been working on was completely drained dry. "So nine total." That just embarrassed me even more since he was only able to make three. Granted, I had my whole body while he only had half. Plus, he hadn't overloaded _twice_... "The quality's barely worth it," he was saying, "but it's better than that corrosive slag you've been making. It'll at least keep us alive." I nodded and finally looked at him again, reluctantly convincing myself that I couldn't refuse to look at him forever just because I was embarrassed, especially since this would have to become a regular occurrence to keep us functioning properly. "Wibbling idiot" indeed.

He was stretched out as best he could get, fingers drumming against his thigh very near to the place he kept stimulating earlier. It was then that I noticed the exposed circuitry in his side was sparking faintly as it had when he had overloaded himself earlier, something which should have stopped quite a while ago. His intakes and vents were still humming to cool his systems as well, and his optics were dimmed slightly and a little glazed.

Even I didn't need long to figure out what he had done, and the realization that he had overcharged himself again while watching me was even more humiliating than the fact that he had simply watched. He countered my horrified stare with a grin that seemed to say, _About time you figured it out._

The grin widened as he opened his mouth to speak, and I shook my head vigorously. Don't you say it - don't you _dare_ say it--

"If it's any consolation, you put on quite a show."

"I hate you."


	5. Chapter 5

"What is _with_ your obsession with my foot?"

I shouldn't have been surprised when my insistent question was met with only a shrug as it had been every time I asked it before. I let out a noise of frustration when large fingers once again traced around my turbine and tried to wrench my foot away from him, but he held fast. He was just going to grab it again later anyway.

I checked my internal chronometer and let out another frustrated noise, this one to no one and nothing in particular. It had been just under an Earth month since the planetary eclipse started. We stopped hearing the melodic crowing of the flying monsters at least five orns ago as they left the area to search for new sources of food, and now, the only noises that broke the silence of the cave anymore were our own voices when we felt like talking, the scraping of metal against rock when we moved, and the dull hum of our systems. The silence was nearly choking, and I couldn't come up with an excuse to break it - I already said I'm not a talker, and we had plenty of energon cubes to last us for another week.

It was after our last round of making them that he started pawing over my remaining foot. I awoke one day to find myself flat on my back on the cave floor instead of propped against the wall where I had been, and my foot was in his lap where he quietly traced his fingers over the edges and across my turbine. He could keep himself occupied for hours doing that, and he refused to answer me when I asked - or, rather, demanded to know - what was so fascinating about my foot. Was it because it was smaller than his? Was it because I only had one left? Was there some sort of disgusting stain on the bottom I didn't know about that he was trying to figure out what it used to be? He never answered me - he just shrugged, gave me a sheepish look, and continued violating it. I was beginning to get sick of not having an answer.

Especially since this was the eighth time I'd asked.

Especially since this was the _fourteenth_ time I'd caught him doing it.

I tried to wrench away from him again, this time succeeding and earning a tiny noise of disappointment from him. "Are you just bored?" I grumbled as I awkwardly dragged myself back over to my spot and propped myself up against the wall. He still didn't answer, but the sheepish look he gave me was answer enough. I was bored too, but we had run out of old war stories - those we wanted to share, at least - combined with the fact that I don't talk much. Neither of us figured the other would care to hear about personal memories even though we probably had enough to keep us occupied for another month, especially if I got into some of the parties Rumble and Skywarp teamed together to throw. So, yes, we were both practically bored out of our minds, but at least I wasn't molesting his feet.

"Then shut yourself down for a while," I huffed and leaned my head back to go offline again. I'd rather keep myself occupied replaying old memories than stare at the rock around us. I have to give him credit though - he actually left me alone for nearly two cycles. Then I was pulled out of recharge by the sound of him shifting from his spot to move closer to me, and I once again found my foot in his hands.

"I swear, Prime, if you don't leave my foot alone, I'll make you regret it," I snarled with every micron of annoyance I felt for his behavior, lighting my optics just enough so I could see his reaction. He actually stopped for a brief moment, and I could see him weighing the pros and cons of doing as I told. It looked like he was going to finally back off and leave me alone, so I tried to shut down again, once again making myself comfortable.

Then he stuck his fingers _in_ my _turbine_.

I let out an enraged screech that hurt even my audio receptors and jerked my foot out of his hands. It didn't work as well as I'd hoped - the son of a slag heap had positioned himself perfectly, so when I yanked my foot up and away from him, it only dropped right back down, this time into his lap. The highly amused look he gave me only made me angrier. I'd had it. I gave him my very best glare, shifted in my spot on the cave floor, and stamped my foot down on his white pelvic armor. He just looked confused for a moment, and I couldn't keep myself from grinning. Oh, if only he knew.

I started slow - partly because I wanted to make sure I savored his reaction but mostly because I hadn't used my turbine in far too long, and it was taking longer than I wanted to get into gear. It began to spin and vibrate in my foot, and I told my systems to reverse the scorching heat, diverting it through my shoulder vent rather than my foot so only the whine and vibrations fed into him. It didn't take Prime long to figure out what I was up to, but by then, he couldn't stop me.

And I doubt he wanted me to.

I knew there was something under that part of his armor that was very sensitive. I'd only needed to watch him that first time we self-overcharged to make energon to know that. I didn't know exactly what it was - whether it was a pipe, some wires, or even just a panel of boring old metal - but I had seen the effect it had on him when he pulled open the side of the armor and stuck his hand inside, so I knew exactly what my turbine would do.

I was still immensely amused at how _loud_ Prime could be. We were polar opposites in so many ways. I'm loud and screechy under most circumstances, and he's calm, quiet, and collected. My voice doesn't work at all during interfacing for reasons I never could discern, and he shrieks like a banshee. I couldn't deny that I had wondered several times just how loud he could get since we first started making energon through self-overcharge.

Pretty loud, apparently. He tried to squirm away from my foot a few times, but he didn't try very hard. His optics were painfully bright as his head rolled back and he arched away from the wall. His fingers dug furrows into the ground as did his thrashing feet, and he howled so loudly it almost hurt. My leg from knee down was shaking both from the vibration from my turbine and from the way he bucked against me, but I used the wall behind me as support to keep my foot planted firmly on him. As if that wasn't enough though, he grabbed my foot with both hands and tried to push it harder against him. I hadn't expected that, but I took it as my cue and powered down my turbine.

"No...fair...!" he choked when the vibration slowed to a halt. I couldn't help myself - I started laughing at the pitiful keen of disappointment that crawled free of his vocalizer. His whole body was trembling, his headlights and optics flickering faintly. I hadn't had my foot against him long, so it was a little surprising that he was so close to overloading already. Whatever was underneath that armor panel must have been even more sensitive than I anticipated.

Or I'm just that good.

"I'm mad at you - did you really think I was going to let you overload?" I chided. I was having far too much fun with this, and he was too busy whining about the injustice of it all to get even with me. I kept my foot firmly in place even as he tried to squirm against it. I wasn't sure if he was trying to find some sort of stimulation to finish himself off or get out from under me so he could do it himself, but I wasn't about to let him do either, instead lazily drawling, "If you keep your mitts off my foot, I suppose I could reward you by finishing you off."

I wanted to laugh _so_ much when his hands flew away from my foot to grip at the ground again. By some miracle, I kept my composure, albeit just barely. I hadn't expected him to concede defeat so soon, much less _immediately_ , so I hadn't had time to hatch out a plan. I let a low hum start up in my foot again to buy myself time to think, the thrum not enough to send him over the edge but just enough to keep him satisfied until I worked out what I wanted to do.

Finally, I said slowly, cycling down my turbine again so he'd actually listen to me, "You know, it would be more enjoyable if I started from the beginning." His optics switched back on so he could stare at me. He wasn't a total loss - I didn't need to spell out what I meant. He didn't look too comfortable with the idea though, and I couldn't blame him - I wasn't too sure about it myself. We had only watched each other until now. There seemed to be an invisible line we both knew better than to cross when we made energon - I didn't touch him, he didn't touch me. I didn't say anything while he was self-overcharging, and he kept quiet while I was. Sometimes, not often, one of us would overload while watching the other, usually when one of us was angry with the other and wanted to get even via humiliation, something I regretted starting after the first time he did it to me - I hadn't realized until I was on the receiving end just how humiliating it actually _was_.

We'd turned it into a very impersonal task, almost a chore, ignoring that it was supposed to be an intimate act. What I was suggesting crossed that line. Actually, I had already crossed it by violating him with my already violated foot, but that was beside the point. If we crossed that line, the chore wouldn't be a chore anymore even if we stayed in our respective "territory" of the cave from then on. It would bring back the intimacy we had isolated from the act, and it would take us at least another month to re-learn how to ignore it, if we did at all knowing what the other not only looked like in overload but _felt_ like as well.

We're polar opposites in so many ways, yet sometimes...

"It'll be something to do."

Sometimes, he thinks just like me.

It took some work for me to get myself turned around so I could drag myself over to him, and he didn't bother offering to help me - he knew I'd refuse. Instead, he stayed right where he was and waited patiently for me to slide down onto my side and drag myself along the cavern floor. When I got close enough to him, he started to reach out to me, but I snapped a quick "Keep your hands to yourself", and he did as he was told, his hands falling back down to rest on the ground on either side of him.

I grabbed hold of his shoulder and used it as leverage to pull myself into his lap, ordering as I did so, "Don't touch me." I was still trying to keep this as impersonal as possible. I was only doing it because I'd started it and because we were both so bored it hurt. I didn't want to make a habit of this, and I hoped he didn't either.

He stayed perfectly still save for shifting one leg to bring up his knee behind me, giving me support since I was off balance with only two remaining limbs both on the same side. The thrum of his circuitry had died down considerably since the stimulation had ceased, but I could still feel a steady quiver course through him, that plus the embarrassed expression on what I could see of his face indicating he was still very aroused, and I have to admit his self control impressed me. I would have still been squirming.

I started with his throat like I always did myself and almost immediately wished I had both hands to work with. It would have made this easier, but there was no sense in complaining - I had to work with what I had, and that was one hand and one thruster.

My fingers traced over his neck from back to front and all the way around, mapping out the plating, cables, and wires. The layout was different than mine, but the overall structure was the same, so I expected it to cause the same sensations in response to touch. I spread my hand over his throat, pulling back a plate to push my fingers underneath while my thumb rubbed up and down a cable. I kept my attention completely focused on my hand and tried to ignore the fact that he was watching me closely. I'm not sure why that bothered me, and I decided the best way to ignore it was to make him stop, so once my fingers were under the plating on his throat, I busied them rubbing over the wires underneath. I couldn't help feeling pleased when my action sent a shudder through him. I'd never done this to someone my size before, so I was a little nervous that I was going to do it wrong, that what worked on my own body didn't necessarily work on anyone else my size.

He dimmed his headlights so the brightness and close proximity didn't hurt my optics, but I still had enough light to see what I was doing. His optics flickered as another shudder went through him, and this time, he let out a low moan. I attributed it to the fact that he was still aroused from earlier - surely his neck wasn't that sensitive too, was it? It could have just been that neither of us had enjoyed another's touch since before the destruction of Cybertron - even longer than that for me.

His intact antenna was on my left - the hand I _didn't_ have anymore - so I had to wrap my right arm around his head to get to it at a decent angle, the bend of my arm cushioning his head while my fingers traced up the length of his antenna. It put me at an awkward position with my cockpit pressed against his chest, but at least his optics were offline at that point. I jumped slightly when a crackle of electricity sparked up the length of the metal spike, at first thinking I had done something I shouldn't, but my thoughts were put at ease when the spark made him moan again, louder this time.

Pressed closer to him, I could feel just how hard he was struggling to stay still, his whole body quivering with every trace of my fingers up and down his antenna. It wasn't going to take much to pull him back up to where he was when I shut down my turbine earlier, so I tried to make the most of it since, if I had my way, this would be the only time we did this. I curled my fingers around his antenna and stroked up its length from base to tip and back down. He spasmed in response and fought to keep his hands on the ground beside him.

I couldn't resist anymore. I had to ask, "Out of curiosity, exactly how long _has_ it been for you?" I really was curious. Surely he wasn't this sensitive _all over_ \- time had to be a factor. There came that horribly embarrassed look of his as he barely powered on one optic to look at me, debating the wisdom of answering my question. I just gave him a less than impressed look of my own. I was growing weary of how easily embarrassed he was. "Trust me, I'm positive I've got you beat."

He conceded defeat with a sigh and reluctantly answered, a quiver in his voice as I traced one finger up the length of the antenna, "About a year after we crashed on Earth...so a little over half a vorn." If he was going to continue that anecdote, he cut himself off with another moan and shudder, his optic going dark again.

"Told you - I've got you beat." I didn't elaborate, and he was too distracted at the time to ask me to. I could feel his systems thrumming, his vibrations trailing up through my own body. It was impossible to _not_ react to it even though I tried to ignore it.

I shook my head and removed my hand from his antenna, grinning at the disappointed whimper he gave me. I could have sent him over easily that way, but I hadn't done anything below his neck. Why waste the opportunity to explore? With that in mind, I lowered my hand to trace the outline of the windows in his chest plate, searching for more sensitive areas. Once I'd completed a circle of the window rim itself, I let my fingers find one of the cracks in the glass and follow it where it spread over the surface in jagged lines from one corner of the glass panel to the opposite corner. The glass was a light, opaque blue in this form much like the orange glass of my own cockpit. At least his matched the rest of him - mine clashed with my own paint job.

Molesting his windows gave no reaction other than a faint shiver just from being touched in a way he hadn't been for the last half a vorn, so I continued my exploration downwards. I could feel his systems vibrating through the grill in his lower abdomen, and I let my hand rest there for a moment, palm flat against the metal. The vibration went straight up my arm to settle in the connecting clamps which secured my null ray to my arm, and it almost felt like fingers brushing over the circuits there, a fact which made a tremor of my own shake my arm.

Bad Starscream - concentrate.

My hand finally made its way to his pelvic armor, and he gave such a hard shudder of anticipation, he almost shook me out of his lap. This wasn't going to take long if he kept that up. I lazily traced my fingers along the edge of the armor just to make him squirm before I tried to find how to get into it. I knew he always opened the right side, but the catches I found there wouldn't budge when I tried to unlatch them. Annoyed, I gave them an impatient tap with one finger and huffed, "Is there a trick to this?"

His laugh shook me a little, but I managed to stay steady, watching as he grabbed the right side of the pelvic cover with both hands and wrenched it so hard I was surprised the latches didn't break. "It's stubborn," he muttered to answer my initial question, moving his hands back down to the ground. I figured that was his way of saying I needed two hands to get it open without rubbing it in. At least it was open now, and my curiosity flared up anew when it caught up to the fact that I was about to find out what was so sensitive in there.

Since it opened on my left, it was awkward to get into with my remaining hand, but I managed after two tries and felt around, seeing with my fingers since the angle was too awkward for me to actually look. Circuits, cables, wires, a bare piece of metal here and there - nothing out of the ordinary.

Then I found a tightly packed bundle of wires near the top of the pelvic area.

As soon as the tips of my fingers touched those wires, he let out a deep, rumbling moan, and his head rolled back as if he lost all strength in his neck. The leg he had propped up to support my back went limp and slid back down to the cave floor as he squirmed and tried to push himself against my hand, digging his fingers into the rocky cave floor. I just watched him for a moment, just barely plucking the wires as I counted them - seven or eight tightly bunched together horizontally along the very edge of the area. His antennae made sense. His throat made sense. Ordinary electrical wires in his pelvic area? Why they were so sensitive made little sense, but then again, solid pleasure points like that rarely did - like my leg.

"So, who was it?" I suddenly asked him. "The last one you were with, I mean. Just out of curiosity." He squirmed and the dazed look he gave me said he almost didn't want to be bothered answering, so I quit touching the wires to make him pull his head back out of his sensors. I had a reason for distracting him - if I distracted him from the majority of the pleasure, it would last longer. I learned that the hard way, not that I complained at the time.

He finally found his vocalizer again, so I resumed my bare tracing of those wires. "J-Jazz," he croaked as another shudder went through his body, this one also making its way down my own leg from the way I was sitting on him. "He made...the brilliant deduction...th-that I needed to - _nngh!_ \- r-relax."

"I concur," I responded blandly. I kept up the teasing touches to the wires for a little longer before an idea struck me, and I couldn't fight off the devious grin that crossed my face. "Is he the one you're thinking about?" I asked, lowering my voice to almost a purr, another trick I learned a long time ago and one that must have worked just as well on him as it did me as his shudders began to increase in intensity. "Or maybe someone else? Elita-1?" I kicked in my turbine again and dragged my foot up from his ankle as far as I could go up his leg with only the one leg to support me, letting the vibration from my foot add to what I was doing to his waist.

"N-No," he choked between loud moans, still trying to push his hips further into my hand. There was a certain non-sexual euphoria about this situation that I couldn't help basking in - I had the mighty Optimus Prime quivering under me. He was at my mercy, an accomplishment achieved by no other Decepticon. It was almost a pity it didn't matter anymore though that didn't stop me from basking in the sense of power it gave me.

I leaned forward, pressing my shoulder to his chest so I could tilt my head around to murmur directly into his right audio receptor. "Someone else then? Who?" I asked, enjoying the way he trembled in response. I was enjoying this far too much though it faded a little when I noticed something odd. His chest plate had split down the middle between the windows and opened slightly, and there was an odd, blue light shining from the crack. I shook my head and ignored it for the time being, assuming it was part of his headlights, and instead focused my attention back on his audio receptor. "Maybe Ironhide? Or Ratchet?" As I pushed a finger between the wires to separate them and stroked it back and forth between them, I estimated I had just a few astroseconds left before he couldn't take anymore.

I was a few astroseconds off.

His arms both wrapped around me and crushed me to his chest without warning as he arched away from the cavern wall and screamed my name. He writhed and shook convulsively under me, fingers clawing desperately at the thin sheet of metal that covered where my wings used to be. I started to laugh at the way he was clinging to me, but my voice caught in my vocal processor when I felt something very strange. Something shot from his slightly open chest and through my cockpit into my own systems, and it made me let out a choked and startled yell as every circuit in what was left of my body came fully online and I shuddered against him in turn. As soon as that sensation left, it came again, and all I could do was shake against him and grab at his arm for support as I waited for it to subside again.

His shakes finally subsided to quivering aftershocks, but he didn't let go of me yet which was just as well since I doubted I had the strength to stay upright in his lap without support. I had no idea what he'd done to me - I just knew it left me weak and tingling all over. It felt nice, but the fact that I didn't know what it was or what had caused it made me very nervous.

"What...was that?" I finally managed to ask once I was sure my vocal processor was working again.

"What was what?" he murmured lazily. His optics were half-lit and glazed, staring at the opposite wall, and was he rubbing my back? I squirmed when I noticed that, but he didn't let go of me. I could feel his systems still thrumming from where I was settled against him - why was that? He had just overloaded more strongly than he had any of the times he'd stimulated himself. His systems should have been quieting down if not already relaxed by now, but there was still a steady vibration as if he was still aroused.

Wait - that was me.

I thought I'd kept my central processor where it was supposed to be, but obviously not - now that I noticed it, my own systems were quivering much like his had earlier, and his hands sliding up and down my back definitely weren't helping.

"Whatever you did," I clarified in an attempt to distract myself and let my sensors calm down. "You shocked me with something while you were overloading - what did you do?" I demanded. I looked at his chest to try to discern the mystery for myself, but it was closed now and looked as if it had never opened and I had only imagined it. I finally found the strength to plant my hand on one of his windshields and push myself off of him into a straight sitting position. I was still dizzy, but I was very uncomfortable not knowing what he'd done to me, and sitting up made him finally still his hands though he kept them at my back to support me.

Full coherence entered his optics again when he processed my question, and he tilted his head quizzically to the side, his confusion and surprise evident in his voice as he asked me in return, "You've never felt someone else's spark energy before?"

Why in Primus' name would he ask me that? Of course I hadn't - one's spark was to be guarded and protected. It's our source of life, after all - as long as one has that, one can be completely rebuilt and still be oneself. No one should ever be allowed near it or even allowed to _see_ it other than medics, and even then, only if the patient's life is in danger and removing the spark chamber is the only way to ensure the patient's survival. It's too dangerous otherwise.

I told him all that, and he looked, for lack of a more accurate word, shocked.

"So, when Decepticons interface, it's only by touching?" he asked. I think I should have been angry or at least thrown off by how innocently he asked that question, but all I did was frown in confusion.

"How else would it be done?" Definitely _not_ the right way to respond to that. A sudden, growling rumble rolled from his body through mine from where I was still sitting in his lap, and it took me a moment to realize he'd just revved his engine at me. I wanted to be offended at that, but the vibration it made went straight down my leg, and I wasn't fast enough to suppress a small shiver in response. Of course, that just killed all my previous attempts to quell my own quivering circuitry, and my sensors came back online to receive more. Still, I tried to hide my reaction by giving him my best "I am not amused" glare. Hey, it worked on Ramjet.

He squirmed sheepishly and rebooted his vocalizer to make sure it was steady before he answered, "Spark energy. Two Autobots expose their spark chambers to one another and send pulses of their spark energy into each other."

I was dubious at best.

"Why would you do that?" I regretted asking it the second the last syllable left my vocalizer. I thought back on what I'd felt when he was in overload, and actually thinking about it, it hadn't felt necessarily _bad_. It didn't feel _good_ either, but if what he said was true, maybe it was because my own chest hadn't been open at the time. However, the thought of exposing my spark chamber, especially considering the horrible state of my body, was unnerving if not frightening. I don't know how hardy a spark chamber is, but it must be fairly fragile if it needs such heavy protection and must be buried so deeply in a mech's body. The spark itself is even more fragile, I'm sure, yet he was talking about sending jolts of energy directly at someone's spark. It was entirely too dangerous.

One hand resumed its slow up and down trek along my back. He must have assumed where my train of thought was headed since he dodged my spoken question and instead spoke with his voice lowered as if he was trying to console me. "It's not dangerous." Either my expression showed more than I liked, or he was very adept at reading me. "A spark chamber is stronger than it would appear to be, and the energy passed between two mechs is their own spark energy - it's absorbed by the spark and dispersed through the body. It's harmless."

"I'm less than convinced," I grumbled.

His hand hesitated at the base of my back, and I could see him thinking about what he wanted to say next, judging whether or not he should and weighing the consequences. "I could show you," he finally managed to say.

I stayed silent for a long moment. I had to admit I was intensely curious, but still - it sounded dangerous, and any other Decepticon would have agreed with me. You don't go near another's spark chamber for any reason except to remove it for medical reasons - every Decepticon knows that. But, slag him, his words made me think. Decepticons are a distrustful lot. We don't even trust each other to watch our backs in battle - it's been like that for tens of thousands of vorns. If we can't trust each other to watch our backs, how in Primus' name could we trust each other to do something like _that_?

Maybe we had always been able to, and we just forgot how.

"Frag, I'll try anything once."

His engine revved again, and I almost regretted saying that. He had been expecting rejection, and I could see how surprised he was that I accepted. I was a little surprised as well, but like I said, I'll try anything once. It was better than going back to being bored out of my central processor, and I was curious.

"Open your chest," he all but ordered me. Nervousness crept its way back into my systems, but I reluctantly did as I was told. I was not so cowardly as to back down now just because I was nervous. I wasn't some skittish femme afraid of trying anything new.

At my silent command, my cockpit split vertically down the middle and slid open with little protest from the rarely used gears. Opening it that way instead of its usual upward sway from my nosecone was the best way to get that deeply inside my systems; all of the annoying instruments and other cosmetic innards of my alt mode were moved aside as well to hide in specially made cavities in my chassis. The left side didn't have the room it used to, so part of it ended up jutting out of my torn side, but I ignored that and instead, at his prompting, proceeded to take down all of my other defenses.

With each panel I moved aside, I grew more and more nervous, feeling bare in a way I had not felt since a time before I had acquired my very first alt mode. Thick, armored plates and clamps parted or moved at my command. After the fourth, I knew I was completely exposed. I couldn't see it myself, but I knew my spark chamber was bare now - I could feel the stagnant air of the cavern touch it, and I didn't like it one micron. The protective plates spasmed as I debated closing them again and just forgetting this whole idea.

"Just relax." His voice was little more than a murmur as he tried to calm me, and his left hand resumed tracing up and down my back while his right moved around from my back and trailed down from my shoulder and along the edge of my retracted cockpit. He kept his headlights dim, and I could see a warped reflection of my chest in his windshields. It was surprising since I'd never seen a spark chamber before, but it must have been transparent, or at least translucent, because I could see the light from my spark shining off the cracked glass in his chest. I never thought about what color my spark might be, but I never imagined it would be gold - not just yellow, but _gold_. I almost wished I could see it for myself rather than just a warped and broken reflection. Almost.

Prime continued to just trace the fingers of his right hand around the cavity, and each touch sent a faint tremble through my frame. He was waiting until I relaxed more. I wanted to tell him to hurry up and get it over with, but I was sure he'd take great offense to that. Besides, if this really was supposed to be pleasurable, why not draw it out some? Still, some of my impatience must have shown since he soon reached inside my chest.

I honestly expected it to hurt. I expected to black out at any moment and never come online again. Neither happened - instead, I found myself wondering if this was what those wires in his pelvic area felt like. He just barely traced his fingers along the edge of my spark chamber, and that touch alone was enough to make my whole body, what was left of it, shake and my optics shut off on their own. If it weren't for his left hand at my back, I probably would have fallen over. I tried to glare at him when I heard him laugh, but my optics shut off again as my head rolled back when his fingers brushed over my spark chamber again.

Every single sensor in what was left of my body was online, and every circuit quivered. Wires sent jolts through my frame, and I could feel the gears and clamps that normally would have held my wings try to vibrate in response to the rest of my body's reactions. It wasn't any different from being stimulated by normal means except he was only touching one part of me, and every pulse and vibration and sensory flare was tripled in intensity. It took him less than a klik to do to me what it would have taken nearly three breems to do with the kind of stimulation I was used to.

"See?" he drawled, his amusement infuriatingly obvious in his voice. "It's not dangerous." I wanted to hit him, but my hand wouldn't cooperate, my fingers trembling where they were pressed against the glass in his chest, so I instead just glared at him as best I could to show my annoyance. He just laughed again and let his left hand slide down my back. His hand moved to grip my thigh, a knee propping me up in its place, and before I could ask what he was doing, he tightened his grip on my thigh to pull me tightly against him and rumbled his engine again.

I shouldn't have been surprised. He had been watching me for nearly a month and had seen me digging my fingers into the junction between my thigh and my pelvic armor, so he knew about the cable. I just hadn't expected him to use it against me.

With him gripping my thigh and pressing me so tightly against him, the vibration from his revving engine went straight down the sensitive cable in my leg and made me shake anew. The remaining intake on my chest immediately started sucking in the cavern's stagnant air, and my shoulder vent expelled my body's heat as best it could working alone. What was left of my other vent tried, but it might as well not even bothered since it was so barely functional. I felt my vocalizer snap loose as it always did when I was that aroused, preventing me from voicing how good it felt. The only sounds in the cavern were his engine and my humming circuits.

"So," he murmured as he continued to barely touch my spark chamber and watched me shake on top of him. "Out of curiosity, how long was it for _you_? You said you had me beat." He said it in the exact same tone of voice I used earlier, and I knew he was trying to distract me to draw it out just as I had. I really, really needed to learn my lesson about pulling things like that when I didn't want it turned against me.

I doubt he knew how much better it worked on me than it did him. In order to answer him, I had to pull my mind away from my thrumming sensors and concentrate on tightening the cables in my neck to push my vocalizer back into place. I couldn't talk unless I did that, and it required a lot of concentration to keep it there too, so it was a far better distraction for me than it had been for him.

"About...a vorn b-before we left Cybertron," I finally managed to grind out though my words were mixed in with static as my vocal processor insisted on trying to disconnect at every word. Yes, I had him beat by nearly fifty thousand vorns. Granted, we were all in stasis for the majority of it, but it still counts, right?

I _almost_ demanded he quit revving his slagging engine at me every time I said something that surprised him or turned him on. _Almost_. I would have if it hadn't felt so good.

He pulled both his hands away from me for a few astroseconds too long for my liking then carefully turned me around so my back was to him. It broke my concentration, and my vocal processor snapped back out of place before I could ask him what he was doing. I heard him shift behind me and felt him move a little under me, and then I found myself staring up at the cavern ceiling as he leaned me back against his chest where he was now laying on the cave floor. My head ended up resting on his shoulder, and he wrapped his left arm around me to make sure I didn't slide off, his right hand trailing down my intact side to my thigh again.

It was far too intimate a position for my liking, but then his left hand started touching my spark chamber again, and I stopped caring. My back arched off of him, and my optics shut down again as I felt a jolt course through my overheating body. The fingers of his right hand tapped my thigh just over where he must have known that cable was hidden, and that just made me squirm more.

"And who was the last one you were with?" he asked right in my audio processor, once again in the same tone I'd used. Unlike me though, he didn't make any guesses which confirmed my suspicion that he'd heard those rumors. That, and he probably didn't want to entertain the disgusting image of me and Megatron.

It took another moment for me to work my vocalizer back into place again so I could answer, "C-Contrary to what I'm sure you heard...there w-was only ever one." He responded to that with a curious hum, his attention fully on me. I could guess what he was thinking - he was an Autobot, after all - and he was wrong. Love is too ridiculous and flighty an emotion for a Decepticon to be bothered to entertain. We got together out of boredom and convenience - nothing more.

"Who?" His fingers drummed on my thigh and traced over the junction, just barely avoiding the cable.

It was hard to keep my concentration on my vocalizer with the combination of him doing that and his left hand in my chest, but I managed to choke out, "F-Frenzy!" It was ironic, really. Those rumors had placed me in the recharge station of everyone - even _Ravage_ once - but no one ever tried to pair me with Frenzy. Neither of us ever understood why even though it didn't matter.

I glanced to my side and grumbled at him when the hand in my chest stopped what it was doing, "It's not that bizarre an image. Would you rather I said Megatron?" He gave me an indignant huff and silenced me by sliding his fingers down my spark chamber and digging the fingers of his right hand into my thigh to grab the cable between his thumb and a finger. Frenzy could fit his whole hand in there to slide it up and down a good portion of the cable's length though that didn't mean Prime's fingers weren't enough to make me seize up in ecstasy too. A thin shriek died in my throat when I lost my grip on my vocal processor again, and I _writhed_.

My central processor was so hazy from sensation, I almost didn't hear a click. I felt something move under my back and numbly realized he was exposing his spark chamber again. The nervousness tried to come back, but it couldn't find a decent grip - all I could think about was his hands and what they were doing to me.

"Why Frenzy?" he asked conversationally. Slag him - how could he be so calm? I wanted to reach back and grab those wires of his again, but my hand refused to cooperate.

I tightened my throat again and growled, "We were bored." I let my vocal processor snap back out of place. That was all he was getting until he let me overload, and I made that point clear by bucking my hip against his hand. He just laughed and slid his left hand away from my spark chamber to secure his arm around my torso.

Then he did it again. He sent a rolling shock of what he called spark energy through my back and into my own spark chamber. It felt extraordinarily different this time though, and I can only assume it was either because I was so close to overloading already or because my chamber was exposed. It actually felt _good_ this time. I could feel my spark shudder in its casing as the energy hit it and dispersed through the rest of my body, circuitry humming and crackling.

I was in completely new territory and had no idea what to expect. I felt something swell in my chest and managed to find enough presence of mind to cast a glance downward. The gold light from my spark was growing brighter, shining in the exposed cavity in my chest. I tried to watch it longer, but just an astrosecond or two later, it dimmed sharply, and my head fell back as I arched away from him again. When the light dimmed, I felt a crackling heat surge out of my back as my spark sent a responding pulse to his. That felt even better if that was possible. His arm tightened around me, and he yelled, shuddering under me for a brief klik before he shot another spark pulse into me, this one hotter and stronger than the first.

I lost all control if I had any to begin with, and it seemed he did too. Our sparks acted on their own, receiving and firing pulses in an erratic rhythm that made it impossible to think about anything but how every circuit in my body felt as if it was about to fry, a feeling which normally would have made me panic, but right now, it felt glorious. I couldn't utter a sound, but he made enough noise for both of us, crying out with every surge I sent him and writhing underneath me. It was fairly slow at first, but the closer we both got to overloading, the faster and stronger the pulses came and went. I grabbed for anything I could get my hand on and eventually found his right forearm - it might have been the left; I wasn't exactly completely aware of what I was doing at that point - and squeezed it until the metal plating dented, and the thought crossed my mind that maybe making a habit out of this wouldn't be such a bad idea after all. The last thing I noticed was my body seizing up before my optics shut down.

The next thing I knew, he was leaned back against the cavern wall again and was, for lack of a better word, cradling me in his lap against his massive chest, his right arm under my back and his left draped over and around my leg with his hand supporting my aft. I didn't like it any more than I had the intimate position he had used earlier, but my equilibrium sensors were still reeling, so I didn't even try to move, instead staring blankly at the cracks in his windshields while I waited for my optics to focus again. My sensory network was nearly back to normal which prompted me to check my internal chronometer, and I was surprised to note a quarter of a cycle had passed, and that was when I realized he'd offlined me.

He'd frelling _offlined_ me.

That had _never_ happened before. I might have been unnerved if I'd had the energy to entertain the thought. I only had the energy to reach up dumbly and run a finger down one of the cracks in the glass by my face.

He looked down at me when he felt that and mused, "Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

"I hate you."

He just laughed and leaned his head back against the rock again, shifting a little where he was sitting to make himself more comfortable. "Why Frenzy?" he asked again, knowing I was an exhausted, captive audience now.

I gave him a tired shrug as I answered, "We were bored, our off-time coincided, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Went on and off for a few thousand vorns." Mostly though, we were friends, a fact which I wasn't going to put forth willingly. The screechy, egotistical, selfish Starscream had a friend? Horror of horrors. I didn't think he'd mock me for it, but I didn't think it was any of his business either. "Main reason was because he liked my lap."

That earned another curious hum. "Your lap?"

"Yeah." I shrugged again. "He'd get bored, come loiter in my quarters, and recharge in my lap while I worked. Rumble was the one who got all the missions, so Frenzy rarely had anything better to do." That was the truth. Frenzy always said my lap was comfy. I'd ask why mine and not Skywarp's or Thundercracker's since we were the same model, but he'd just shut himself down and avoid the question.

Prime fell quiet and mulled over that information. After a moment, he started snickering, probably trying to picture me typing away at my computer with a snoozing Frenzy curled up in my lap.

I shot him a glare before declaring, "Shut up. I'm going back to recharge." I shut my optics off to do just that. I was drained after what we'd just done, and I'd rather shut down than ingest one of our energon cubes and have to stay online to listen to him snickering at his own imagination. I managed to get half a breem of peace before I favored him with an angry growl.

"I mean it, Prime, get your slagging hands _off my foot_!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Fanart by Jewel-Reaver on Deviantart](http://jewel-reaver.deviantart.com/art/TF-Hate-the-Dark-76213729)   
>  [Fanart by Miss-Kamikaze on Deviantart](http://miss-kamikaze.deviantart.com/art/OPxSS-Hate-the-Dark-103915983)
> 
> Thank you both! ♥


	6. Chapter 6

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

I'm not sure what brought it to my attention, but I could feel that something in the air was wrong, and it wasn't just because it had gone stagnant in the months we had been trapped in the cave with the boulder in front of the entrance preventing the air from staying fresh. Good thing we didn't need it to survive.

No, there was something else wrong. I took a brief survey of our "home" - or prison, whichever. The leathery, rotten carcass of the second wyrm I killed so many months ago was as far away from us as I could get it without going outside, and while it reeked, it had been there for months and was nearly nothing more than bones and dried out skin. That couldn't be the problem. We had five energon cubes left and were both as functional as we were going to get on such low quality energon, so there was no need to make more. That wasn't the problem. Even the cave itself wasn't the problem - the ceiling was sturdy, there had been no earthquakes, and the rock looked to be in no danger of caving in on us. It wasn't until I looked over at Starscream that I figured out what was wrong.

"Oh slag," I swore.

It was starting again. He was offline at the moment and didn't notice, but my headlights could easily pinpoint the telltale grey crumble lining his mutilated side, and my systems came fully online in a brief state of panic. He couldn't lose any more of his body - he just couldn't. Not only would it have psychological repercussions, but it would likely kill him. He was already missing vital parts - his body overheated very easily without both intakes and vents properly functioning, and if any more components were compromised, he very well could die.

I didn't waste time trying to wake him gently. I crawled over to him, grabbed him by his remaining shoulder, and shook him awake, demanding, "Open your chest."

He was less than pleased.

"What, again?" he grumbled, still half asleep and trying to squirm away from me. "Primus, you're insatiable. I'm _tired_ , Prime - your way's a lot more exhaustive. Go do yourself." With that, he shut his optics down again and tried to go back to sleep. I might have been embarrassed if I wasn't so panicked.

"Starscream, I mean it - wake up!" I demanded, shaking him again. I think I then understood that human expression "if looks could kill" because he glared at me like he wanted me to burst into flames. Unperturbed though, I insisted, "Look down."

He did. He knew what it looked like from my descriptions, and if he wasn't fully awake when he cast his gaze downward, the look of horror that crossed his face clearly meant he was wide awake now. I think he normally would have checked his reactions, but he wasn't _aware_ the first two times the necrosis had eaten away at his body. I could only imagine how terrified I would be in his situation, and I honestly had no idea if he could feel whatever it was doing to him or not.

I lowered my voice then to try to calm him down, coaxing him to look back to me and away from his rotting side. "Open your chest. I need to take out your spark chamber - that's the only thing that stopped it before." If I was medically trained, I might understand _why_ that was the only thing that worked, but I had no idea - I just knew it stopped it the last two times.

Understandably, he looked at me like I was crazy. "That could kill me." He didn't need to tell me that - I _knew_ that. I almost lost him the last time.

"I know, but it's the only way. Not only that, but if it reaches your spark chamber, you'll die anyway." He flinched and ceased arguing, instead looking away from me and opening his cockpit and the protective panels beyond that. Before our ordeal on this planet, I never imagined the differences between Autobots and Decepticons ran so deeply, from our outlooks and goals to our cultures and even down to our most basic structure. I had seen his spark chamber many times now, but it was still amazing and intriguing. Autobot spark chambers are bulky, opaque, grey metal shaped like a cube, a very boring container for such beautiful matter. A Decepticon's spark chamber - or, at least, Starscream's - was translucent silver, letting the stunning gold light of his spark filter out for all to see while still protecting it. It was diamond in shape and nestled comfortably below his cockpit and protected on all sides by reinforced outer housing. It was also smaller, more streamlined, and much less cumbersome, and considering his body structure, that wasn't surprising. It seems every part of a flight-gifted Cybertronian was sleek and graceful. I'm not sure if anyone else would have found it fascinating, but I did.

I could tell he was scared even though he tried to hide it, betrayed only by his faintly shaking hand where it gripped a rock by his leg, and I wasn't surprised - who wouldn't be? I could kill him by doing this, but he was sure to die if I didn't. Words can't comfort fright like that, and I just don't think he's the hugging type. So, I tried to distract him. I had to touch the chamber to disconnect it anyway.

I gently ran my fingers over the ridges of the chamber with one hand while the other searched for the connections. In response, he gave me one of his delightful, full-body shudders I had grown accustomed to both witnessing and causing over the last few months. Not for the first time, I wondered if his wings shook like that too before he lost them. The image was appealing.

I almost felt badly for not being able to complete the sequence I had started as he let out a tiny whimper when my fingers ghosted over the top point of his diamond-shaped spark chamber, one of the only noises he ever makes during interfacing. At least it was getting his mind off what I was really doing, and bearing that in mind, I became a little bolder, wrapping my hand around his spark chamber and carefully stroking it. The shudder he gave me in response was so violent, he almost shook me back out of his chest. His jaw went slack as his head fell back against the rock wall, his vocal processor trying desperately to make some sort of noise to voice his pleasure. The sensitivity of his spark chamber never ceased to amaze me - I think he almost went into overload right there, and mischievously, I stored that information in the back of my mind for future reference.

At that point, I decided it would be cruel to stop then and deny him release, so I stroked the chamber again while my other hand found the final connection, not undoing it until he was finished. His hand flew to my arm and squeezed until it almost hurt as he thrashed in front of me, shaking and sputtering the turbine in his foot. His spark glowed so brightly it was painful to look at, also shuddering in its casing, and as I watched him shake and writhe, I couldn't help repeating the same thought which had echoed in my mind every time since we had decided to make a habit of this months ago, the thought I would be loathe to let him hear me say simply because he would probably laugh in my face:

Primus, he was beautiful.

I released the final connection as his shaking slowed, pulled that hand free of his chest, and wrapped my arm around him to pull him against my chest and hold him until the final tremors ceased coursing through his body. With my other hand, I pulled his spark chamber out and choked back a retch at how his body slumped against me, essentially dying in my arms. It made me feel ill the first two times, and this time was no different. I hated it. So many had died in the war, and a few had died in my arms in a similar fashion, so the way his body went limp and lifeless was disturbing.

Trying to get my mind on something else, I set his body down on the cave floor and checked over his spark chamber to make sure he was okay, turning the container over in my hands and tracing my fingers along the ridges and points. I doubt my touch did anything with it outside his body with no wires and electrical impulses to send a reaction to the spark itself, but I couldn't help myself. I wanted to feel like I was comforting him since I don't think I was just imagining it when his spark seemed to dim a little as if he was worried. Convinced he was in no immediate danger, I turned back to his body and used a free hand to begin breaking off the necrotic pieces which crumbled to dust. With the already necrotic sections separated, I would be able to tell if it was slowing or stopping though I didn't expect it to for about twelve cycles - that was how long it took the previous times.

When that task was finished, I settled myself back into my spot against the wall and cradled his spark chamber in my lap, watching the way his spark pulsed and glowed. It truly was beautiful, and it was amazing that something so fragile held such spirit and ambition. I had initially removed it the very first time because I was afraid of the necrosis swallowing it as it had what was left of his arm and leg and his remaining wing - it was completely unexpected that removing it stopped the necrosis, but I didn't complain.

His spark was different from the last two times - the previous times, his spark had been dim and unmoving, almost extinguished, especially the second time when it almost _was_ extinguished. Now, however, it was vibrant and moving slightly here and there inside the container. It made me wonder...

"Are you aware?" I asked. I don't know what I expected, but I know I didn't expect his spark to bob up and down slightly in its casing as if he was trying to nod. I thought he would essentially be in a form of stasis. I had to wonder what it was like being aware of one's surroundings outside one's body. He could obviously hear me, but could he see me? I doubted it, but then again, I had been wrong about things already, so I just asked him. "Can you see me?" To this, he coasted back and forth, quickly getting a grasp on how to communicate in such a state.

It had to be strange if not disturbing being separated from his body like that. He could hear, but he couldn't see. He could respond by "nodding" or swaying back and forth, but he couldn't speak. I quickly realized exactly what it must have been like, and I immediately felt guilty for having to remove him not knowing he would be aware - sensory deprivation is a horrible thing to experience, and I couldn't tell from the light inside the container how he was coping with it. Was he panicking, or was he more or less unaffected? It needed to be done, but I hated it regardless. Sensory deprivation is normally a form of torture, yet I had brought it upon him with the pretense of helping.

"Well, you should only be like this for a few cycles," I tried to reassure him though actually I was trying to reassure myself even more, absently stroking the casing with my fingers again. That knowledge seemed to be some sort of comfort to him since he settled down in the container, so I relaxed against the cave wall to wait.

Then a week went by.

I looked down at Starscream's body during a brief pause in my worried pacing along the cave. Why wasn't it stopping? _Why_ wasn't it stopping? It stopped before, but now it seemed to only speed up. His torso was crossed with tendrils of grey, and it was crawling up his throat and down the inside of his thigh. If anything, it seemed to have grown _worse_ by taking out his spark chamber, and I hated how helpless I felt. I couldn't do anything to stop something I didn't understand, but if it didn't stop soon, it was going to eat his face, and I was very reluctant to put him back into a body that didn't have a whole face. Meanwhile, he was trapped outside his body suffering sensory deprivation, and all I could do was carry him around as I paced frantically.

I think the worst part was I couldn't bring myself to tell Starscream what was going on since he couldn't see for himself. I stalled continually, telling him it wouldn't be much longer, that he'd be back in his body soon, but it just continued and grew worse.

I looked down at his spark resting in my hands and suppressed a shiver. His voice was annoying, but it was still better than silence. He had only been awake a few months, and I liked talking to him even when we did nothing but argue for seemingly endless cycles - it was nice to finally have _someone_ to talk to after a quarter of a vorn of basically being alone. I missed his screeching voice, I missed his disgusting humor, and I missed his incessant complaining.

At a loss, I dropped back down to the cave floor and curled up as best I could, cradling his spark chamber. He needed to know - he _deserved_ to know what was happening to his body.

"Starscream...it's not stopping this time. I don't know why, but it's not." I don't know what his reaction was. I think his spark dimmed, but it was hard to tell, and at this point, I think he had already guessed as much anyway. With that confession out of the way, I had no idea what to do. I hated feeling so helpless. I was completely clueless about far too many things - what was happening to his body, why the necrosis wasn't stopping, or what caused it in the first place, but the unanswerable question I hated and dreaded the most was what would happen to his spark separated from a body for this long. I vowed to vastly extend my medical knowledge should we ever escape this horrible planet. I had relied entirely too much on Wheeljack and Ratchet, and that tendency came back to slap me in the face ever since Starscream and I escaped Cybertron.

"If it takes much more of your body..." I started but couldn't bring myself to finish. He knew I wouldn't be able to put him back into his body if that happened or, at least, wouldn't want to subject him to it. There was only one thing I could offer him if it came down to it. "...I could make it quick." All I would need to do is apply the right amount of pressure to the chamber, and it would shatter and crush his spark with it. It would be quick and would be better than being forced to continue to exist with only his hearing and no other sense, and somehow, I knew he would prefer that too - to return to Primus. I wanted someone to talk to, but I couldn't be selfish and subject him to living like that just so I could run my vocal processor. A part of me screamed at the thought of destroying his spark, the part of me that continued to stubbornly cling to the tiny threads of hope that we would be rescued. The now greater pessimistic side of me, however, knew that the odds that we would be had plummeted as soon as we crashed five years ago.

His spark gave no reaction to my declaration, but I didn't really expect it to, and I was resigned. I knew I would want him to do the same for me, and if I needed to destroy him, I could follow him back to Primus with a close-quarters shot from my rifle. It would be quick and painless.

I shook my head firmly and stubbornly clung to my safeguarded hope that everything would work out, that the necrosis would stop, that we would be rescued someday. It wasn't realistic, but it was better than thoughts of self-termination because I knew if I dwelled on that, it would only make me more depressed than I already was. I kept thinking if only I could switch bodies with him - maybe he could figure it out. He was a scientist - I was a fighter and a _dockworker_. If he could see and actively analyze what was happening to his body, maybe he could figure out what it was and find a way to stop it.

Unfortunately, even with my stubborn grasping at optimism and hope, I knew we couldn't do that. As soon as my spark chamber was disconnected, my body would go offline, and then we would both be trapped outside our bodies in sensory deprivation, and I couldn't put him back into his body to do the switch because of the same thing, even more so because he only had one hand to work with. Not to mention the fact that the housing where the spark chamber was connected probably wasn't even the same shape in my body as it was his given the drastically different shapes of our casing.

Those thoughts flitted away and left room for worse thoughts to settle. If I just hadn't become so paranoid about being followed by Unicron, we wouldn't be in this situation at all. Or maybe if I had taken better care to map our route so I could have followed the trail back to Earth when I realized we weren't being followed after all. Or if I hadn't spent all the remaining energy in the evacuation pod sending out that last cry for help so we would have had a better source of energon at least for a little while.

No matter how I looked at the situation, it all came back to one conclusion - it was my fault.

I'm sure others would have argued that assumption, instead telling me I did the best I could have given the circumstances in any case, but Bumblebee, Ironhide, Roller, Ratchet - none of them were here, were they? None of them were likely even still alive. The destruction of Cybertron and their deaths - that wasn't my fault. No matter how depressed and pessimistic I became, even I couldn't place _that_ blame on my own shoulders. But getting lost on probably the opposite side of the galaxy, becoming further lost by trying to backtrack with star charts outdated by several million years, using up all of a ship's remaining energy, and then consuming toxic energon which had done I knew not what to my internal workings?

That was all me.

I lifted Starscream's spark chamber up to my face at optic level and stared at the light he gave off for a long time. How does one apologize for sealing someone else's fate to such a miserable and lonely end? If I had just left him behind, he would have died quickly and probably painlessly without ever waking up when Unicron consumed Cybertron. No, I had to be the piteous and all-forgiving sap I am and save him just because I couldn't save Arcee, because I couldn't save Ironhide and Ratchet, because I couldn't save Cybertron itself. I couldn't leave him because I wanted to think that if Cybertronian civilization truly was finished, I was going to save one little piece of it.

"I'm so sorry."

It was all I could say - all I could find the words for. He actually reacted this time though I'm not quite sure what kind of a reaction it was. His spark brightened slowly at length before dimming again and drooping slightly in his chamber.

I swear I think he yawned in my face.

I doubt it - we don't do such organic gestures except as emulation for effect like sighing. Some Autobots liked to mock yawn when Prowl was giving his typical security lectures, so it was usually a sign of boredom among us than it was a sign of weariness as among organics. I might have been offended under any other circumstances, but at the time, I so desperately needed the chokingly depressing mood to lift, I laughed whether he really did it or not. It wasn't just the thought of him yawning at me like Sideswipe and Sunstreaker always had Prowl - it was that thought combined with the knowledge that I knew several Autobots who would have done the same thing and told me to quit blaming myself for everything that went wrong - also Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, come to think of it.

"Thank you - I needed that," I said between laughs and tucked his spark chamber back into my arms, ignoring how the points on its diamond shape tried to stab me. I could have killed someone with his chamber if I really wanted to. That thought brought to mind an image of me standing over a battered Megatron, my foot pinning him to the ground and Starscream's spark chamber in my hand. I'm normally not one to have such gruesome, violent fantasies, but I allowed myself to indulge just this once to have something to think about other than our situation. The points of his diamond-shaped spark chamber really were sharp enough to kill with application of the right angle and strength, and I envisioned driving one end through Megatron's chest to mark the end of the war once and for all. What did humans call it? Poetic justice, I think - to be killed by his mortal enemy wielding the soul of his own second in command who had been trying to overthrow him for millions of years. I think Starscream would have enjoyed the fantasy if I could share it with him.

I spent the next half a cycle breaking or rubbing off the newly necrotic portions of his body, my worry and dread returning once more when I exposed the circuitry of his remaining leg, a wire from his throat snapping off between my fingers at the barest touch. His cockpit was already webbed with cracks, but the cracks were spreading, branching off into new splits in the glass as the necrosis began its work. His body could still function, but for how much longer, I had no idea.

Drained both physically and emotionally at this point, I didn't bother going back to my spot across the cavern, instead settling next to his body while I cradled his spark chamber. I leaned my head back against the rocks and stared up at the cavern ceiling for a long time before my optics dimmed and shut off of their own accord and I fell into a restless, depressed recharge.

I wasn't quite sure what woke me up at first. I did know I was shocked to realize when I checked my internal chronometer that I had been asleep for a little over five days. How in the name of Primus that happened, I had no idea - I vaguely remembered waking up a few times then drifting back to sleep, but I had no idea why since my energy levels were sufficient. My only guess was I had reached a point where I was so depressed I didn't care to stay awake. That made sense despite how disturbing a thought it was, so I pushed it to the back of my mind for now, stiffly pushing myself away from the rock.

A sharp pain in the right side of my head made me dizzy, and I almost fell forward onto my face, but I was able to stop myself with one arm before I could - a good thing, too, since I could have crushed Starscream's spark chamber. I took a moment to get my bearings straight again before making myself comfortable on my knees and raising my right hand to feel my head. My antenna wasn't damaged - save for the broken off left antenna, no part of my head was, so I was clueless as to what had caused the pain. It had subsided though, so I turned to inspect Starscream's body, less than pleased with what I found.

It had progressed further over the last five days I was asleep. The necrosis had snaked its way across his throat and was starting on the vents in his helmet, what was left of his left shoulder vent long gone and his cockpit with barely piece of glass left whole. I couldn't tell how far it had spread internally - I could only hope it wasn't to his central processor. His optics still seemed fine, but I couldn't be positive just from looking, and I was reluctant to break off the pieces on his head which were beyond help. That feeling of hopelessness started to sink in again. It should have stopped nearly two weeks ago.

The pain in my head returned, sharper this time, and I let out a yell until it subsided. I still couldn't tell what it was or what was causing it, and I couldn't help but grumble cynically, "This is how it ends - alone in a cave with a blown CPU..." If I was going to finish that thought, I couldn't as my voice was stolen by another jolt, this one sending a crackling spark up the length of my antenna. Upset and annoyed now, I reached up to wiggle the loose piece of metal, half tempted to just tear it off so it could share the fate of my left one. When I did, static filled my audio processors as the movement flipped on my barely working communicator, and the noise only annoyed me further. I was about to tear the offending antenna off of my head and stab something with it when the pain jolted me yet again, but this time, I cut my yell off and stared ahead of me at the rock wall, wondering if I was imagining things, if the static filling my audios was just disorienting me.

I heard something.

I jostled my antenna again to try to work it back into place, frantic to determine if I really had heard something or if my feeble mind was playing tricks on me. Nothing came to me but static, and after a few breems, I sank back down to the ground, my spark sinking in rekindled despair. It must have been an echo caused by the deafening static.

With a weary sigh, I slumped back against the rock and stared up at the ceiling again. I forced myself to look down at Starscream's body and sighed again. The necrosis wasn't stopping - there was no point in hoping it would at this point. I looked down at his spark chamber where he bobbed back and forth along its length as if he was pacing either from boredom, worry, or possibly bordering insanity from suffering sensory deprivation so long. The last thought just made me feel worse as I was sure that was the most likely case. I raised the casing to my optic-level and watched him before taking him firmly in my hands.

"I'm sorry."

I started to squeeze. A spark chamber is much stronger than it appears to be, so I was not surprised when it didn't crush with the first try. I looked for a weak spot - I was strong, but my energy levels were just sufficient enough to keep me going - I doubted I was in any semblance of fighting shape anymore, so it was more difficult than it should have been. Readjusting my grip, I tried again only to stop once more, this time because the pain in my head had returned, making my hands spasm and drop his chamber back into my lap. My head jerked up to attention, and I was suddenly fully awake and aware as I truly did hear something crackling over my semi-functional communicator. It was broken up with static, but I could still understand it.

< Optim--- --ime, this is Autob-- C-ty vessel J538--97 piloted by W---l--ck and R--im-- P---e. Do yo- -opy? >


	7. Chapter 7

I have no idea how long I was out of my body - a day? A week? A year? A millennia? I couldn't even bring myself to care. I wasn't sure when he was going to put me back in or if he ever would. I just knew one thing: when and if he did, I was going to rip open his chassis and yank out his spark chamber so he could see what it was like.

This was _fun_!

I had never before felt so at peace. Sure, I couldn't see or feel anything, and, on some level, I was beginning to miss having legs, but I just didn't care anymore. I felt like I was floating on a big, puffy cloud with my arms and legs dangling off the sides, and I imagined that if I had a face, I would have had the biggest, stupidest happy grin plastered on it. The only thing that broke the peace was when he talked to me. I quit listening to him a long time ago. Well, actually _listening_ \- I did like the _sound_ of his voice. It resonated around me and sent a very pleasant vibration through every fiber of my being, so that just made being like this even better. I'd always liked Soundwave's voice, but _Prime's_...I'd always heard of some 'bots having voices like sex in audio, but I'd never actually believed it. Until now, of course. I'd stopped listening, but slag, I wished he'd keep talking.

I was worried when he first took me out of my body - who wouldn't be? I had convinced myself I was dead before he even started disconnecting my spark chamber.

Come to think of it, maybe him toying me into overload while he was taking my casing out was why I felt so giddy and...well, turned on the whole time now. Not that I was complaining. If I was going to die, this would be the way to go - happy and peaceful and feeling like I just endured the strongest overload of my life and was basking in the afterglow.

Being suddenly separated from my body was strange to say the least. I think I panicked when my vision and sense of touch were suddenly cut off, my voice with them so I couldn't scream. Without my vision, it was pitch black, and I've already gone over how much I hate the dark. The only thing I could process was fear, expecting to be shot at any moment from weapons hidden in the darkness.

Then he started talking, and I quickly realized that I had been taken away from an achy, broken, and half-functional shell and sent to a place of perpetual bliss. I'd liked his voice before, but when it started rumbling around me in a way I'd never experienced before, all the panic and fear quickly dissipated. I listened to him at first, listened to him tell me stories about Cybertron before the war, stories about the Autobots' escapades on Earth, and several other subjects I can't recall. I think he was trying to keep himself distracted as well as convince himself he was keeping me company, but I couldn't be sure exactly what he was saying most of the time. I was too busy basking in the wonderful vibrations his voice sent through me, and that was all I cared about from then on the whole time I was stuck outside my body.

He was talking again, yelling for some reason, and I tried to stretch myself out if that was possible so I could feel every word and decibel, shuddering in delight. I was ever so slightly curious as to why he was yelling, but try as I did, I just couldn't bring myself to care - it felt so slagging _good_ I hoped he wouldn't stop. He wasn't yelling at _me_ anyway - the vibrations were stronger when he was actually speaking to me, so I just assumed he was talking to himself. Not a good thing under most circumstances, but again - see if I cared.

He yelled again, and I shuddered again. Primus, I _loved_ his voice. I found myself wondering if it would feel any better or just the same if it was Soundwave instead, and that thought made me wonder what it would feel like if _both_ of them were talking to me like this, and _that_ thought made me shudder yet again. I swear I think I would have overloaded at least three times in succession if I could have while he was yelling.

Then something happened, and the good feeling was gone. It took me what felt like an eternity to figure out what the problem was as the good vibrations faded away and were replaced by a very annoying ache on my left side of which I'd nearly forgotten the cause. The necrosis must have stopped, and I was back in my body. I numbly realized that I had even less of my body to work with than before he took out my spark casing, and there was a peculiar tingle snaking down the inside of my remaining thigh and across my throat. Why was it still so dark though? Oh, right.

Upset about being taken away from that happy void, I groggily turned on my optics, slowly registering the fact that my left one was acting funny. The inside of the cave didn't look any different at first until I noticed something out of the corner of my vision and stiffly turned my head to look at it. I knew on some level that seeing little scraps of rainbows darting around the cave meant that my central processor was being very, very slow to reboot, the rest of my systems equally slow to recover from being without my spark for so long. However, that "I give a slag" circuit still hadn't quite kicked in yet, and all I could think about was trying to catch one of the little rainbows so I could show it to Prime. They didn't want to be caught though - I weakly snatched at one of them with my remaining hand, and it squirmed away before my still half-numb fingers could close around it. I grabbed at another only to have it evade my grasp as well. Upset and determined as my systems continued to recover and my reaction speed improved, I continued to try to catch them, but the stupid rainbows just mocked me, a few flitting right in front of my face before they began to fade away. I took a moment to pout before finally taking the time to survey the cave more thoroughly.

My left optic's image was...warped. The picture was bulbous on the top, twisted in the middle, and jagged on the bottom, and my left audio receptor was completely useless, that whole side of my head aching and itchy. Groggy as I was, I quickly figured out why, and that made me panic. The necrosis was in my slagging _head_. How far away was it from my central processor? I looked down at what remained of my body, and the panic only grew - I could see my spark casing through the hole in my side, most of its protective coverings gone. The stupid, ever-curious scientist in me just stared at it for a few dozen astroseconds, a thought crossing my mind that muttered "so _that's_ what it looks like".

The less intrigued, panicking part of me was simply screaming "take me _back out_!"

Only then did I realize Prime wasn't in his spot across from me. He was at the entrance to the cave, and it was hard to tell with his back to me - and, thus, his headlights mostly out of view - but it looked like he had pushed the rock sealing us in away from the entrance some so he could look out. I had no idea what he was looking for - I could see from between his legs that the suns hadn't risen yet, and as awareness continued to slowly come back to me, I knew the planetary eclipse hadn't lasted long enough anyway. The flying monsters must have vacated the area a long time ago, or else his head would have been gone by now.

"Wh-- are -ou d--ng?" I rasped, almost every word interrupted by a metallic ringing that made my working audio receptor hurt. Startled by how horrible I sounded, my hand flew to my throat though I'm not sure what I was intending to do. I did know I felt a terrible sense of dread wash over me when part of my neck flaked off in my hand. It must have gotten to my vocalizer too.

He seemed startled by it too, whipping his head around to stare at me as if he was making sure that really was me. It certainly didn't _sound_ like me. At least he didn't make me repeat myself - I don't think my audios would have liked that.

"I received a signal," he answered. It took me longer than it really should have to understand what he meant, but when I did, I felt my spark leap up in its casing. He must have guessed what I was going to ask next - either that, or he wanted to make sure he stopped me from speaking again. If I was him, it would have been the latter. "My communicator's been broken for years though, so I can only receive - I can't send a signal back," he continued. "What about yours?" Rather than subject either of us to my ruined vocalizer again, I just shook my head and pointed to the left side of my head - that's where my communicator was, and I knew already that if my audio receptor on that side wasn't working, my communicator was beyond hope. And to think I turned down Soundwave the one time he suggested installing one on both sides. Slag me.

Disappointed, he turned back to the entrance to poke his head out again, scanning the sky. "They have to be fairly close; probably locked in on the last distress call I sent out with the evacuation pod." I just nodded even though he wasn't looking at me. If whoever he was getting the signal from had done that, they would have gone to the source of the signal. The question was were they below the atmosphere trying to locate us, or were they in orbit just trying to contact us?

Prime's shoulders stiffened as he looked to the sky, head turning as if he was watching something though from his reaction, I could tell he wasn't sure if he was either seeing a vessel, seeing any of the flying creatures coming back, or his imagination was just playing tricks on him.

He left the cave entrance and stepped over to me, kneeling beside me. He hesitated before iterating the situation probably more to himself than to me. I could figure it out on my own. "We don't have many options," he stated. "I haven't received another transmission in nearly half a cycle. If we leave the safety of the cave in the hopes that someone is in the area looking for us, and the wyrms are still in the area, we're dead."

"W-'re de-- if we st-y her- --yway," I choked out. I don't know about him, but I knew I was. The longer I sat there, the worse my left optic's vision grew, the harder it became to talk, and the looser my spark casing felt in my chest as my body continued to actively rot. He also looked to be low on energy again - not dangerously so, but he would be soon. I hadn't seen any energon cubes around the cave, and the converter looked untouched and a little dusty. Apparently, he hadn't wanted to make any without me. How noble.

My response seemed to convince him, a look of grim acceptance of whatever the consequences may be passing over his masked face. He nodded once and stood to go back to the entrance to the cave and push the rock completely out of the way, leaving the entrance wide open. He then did something I hadn't expected at all: he transformed. I heard gears creak and whine probably from a combination of not being used in so long as well as the fact that he was already so low on energy - transforming takes a lot more energy than it usually does if one is already running low, especially for one as big as he. His headlights shut off for a few astroseconds once he was finished, and I wouldn't have been surprised if he blacked out from the effort, but desperate and determined, he recovered and slowly backed up to get closer to me - something he wouldn't have been able to do had he had his trailer - before opening the right door since it was closer to me.

"Get in!" he snapped, his voice strained.

I was still woozy and awkward, but I was able to slide down onto my right side and drag myself over to him as I had during my one trip outside before the planetary eclipse far too many months ago. He settled down on his wheels to try to give me a better angle so I could get in without straining so much, but it didn't help as much as he probably hoped. Still, I managed to pull myself inside by grabbing onto a small gap between his seats.

It was an absurdly tight fit - I never would have fit with my wings, and I probably still wouldn't have if I hadn't been missing so much of my body. His stick shift stuck uncomfortably into my back, and I barley had enough room curled up over the seats, but he waited for me to try to get into a more secure position - getting comfortable was impossible - before he shut the door, bumping my foot with it. I swore inwardly when a startled yip escaped my slagged vocalizer. I hadn't expected to suddenly be restrained all along my body as best he could manage with his seatbelts, and while they rubbed against my mangled side in a not quite painful but definitely uncomfortable way, I could imagine why he was taking that precaution - I had seen the rocky slope where the cave resided, and I knew it was going to be a bumpy, if not painful, ride.

I was stuck facing the back of the seat, but I doubted I wanted to see where we were going anyway. This was all or nothing - life or death. We were both prepared - _expecting_ to die be it from total depletion of energy or from the flying animals that inhabited this Primus forsaken world. This was a gamble of high stakes, and we both knew it, but we also knew we had to take the chance. The alternative was still death albeit a slower and much more miserable one.

He told me to brace myself, and I latched onto the hand grip on the door by my head and shut off my optics. I knew I would feel when he rolled out of the cave, but I hadn't expected to actually _hear_ it too. His pained cries echoed around me where I lay inside him as sharp rocks dug into his undercarriage. A loud, near-deafening explosion marked the end of one of his tires, another shortly following it. His brakes screeched as he tried to control our descent, but that only made the situation worse, his back end jerking around and sending him down the rocks sideways instead of head-on. I let out a screechy yell of my own as he rolled the rest of the way down, my hand flying from its hold on his door to my side as my spark chamber threatened to rattle free of my body and the seatbelts the only reason I didn't take my own tumble inside him.

Everything went dark when we rolled to a stop on his wheels at the bottom of the slope. Even his internal lights from his dashboard went dark, the only light being the soft red glow from my own optics. He sagged on one side, the one with the flat tires, and he fell disturbingly still, his engine quiet. I waited nearly a breem, and he still didn't move. I couldn't tell how badly he was damaged from my position inside him, and the seatbelts clung stubbornly, preventing me from trying to crawl back out. The best I could do was grab the headrest of the driver's seat and hoist myself into a crooked sitting position with most of my weight on my hip, and I could only maintain that position by wrapping what I could of my arm around the headrest, clinging to it as if my life depended on it.

Nothing but darkness surrounded us. All I could see through any of his windows was the reflection of my own optics. However, I could still hear even with just one working audio receptor, and what I heard was the monsters' warbling crow. They were still fairly far away, but all the noise we made must have gotten their attention.

"Pr--e," I tried, my vocal processor neither better nor worse than before. "--ime?" He didn't move - he didn't react in any way, and I sagged a little where I was clinging to his seat and quietly stared out his back window at the darkness as I accepted the fact that the crash had finished him off - he was dead, and with the flying creatures, the wyrms as he called them, alerted to our presence, I wasn't going to be far behind him.

As I sat there staring out the back window, my fingers absently stroking the material of his headrest, I realized with some amazement that I had already fully accepted my fate. I always thought that if I was to die, it would be by Megatron's hand or possibly Shockwave's, maybe even a lab accident back when I was a scientist. I never anticipated dying on a miserable, dust ball of a planet eaten alive by creatures whose appetites and ability to digest inorganic matter defied logic while trapped inside my worst enemy. There was no point in fighting it though - even if I could get out of Prime's carcass, I couldn't escape. I couldn't see in the dark, there was nowhere to hide, and even if there was, I would be hidden for a week, two at the most, then I would die of energy depletion or by the necrosis. Maybe I could wrench my spark chamber out of my body - if I couldn't finish myself off quickly that way, I at least wouldn't have to endure being eaten alive.

That was when I saw it. I shook my head sharply to jostle my optics some, worried they were playing tricks on me, and I even shut off the left one since it wasn't doing much good anyway, but it was still there - a series of lights in the dark, distant sky. The light given off by it showed the silhouettes of dozens of the flying monsters, but they avoided the thing invading their sky as it made its way in our direction. It didn't have to get any closer for me to know what it was even before I heard the signal crackle over his truck form's primitive radio, a static-filled voice calling for him.

I was surprised at how quiet my voice was, my fingers tracing Cybertronian glyphs into the material of the back of the headrest as I tried again, this time calling him by the name he had been trying to make me use ever since I woke up too many months ago.

"Opt-m-s?"

A painful scream echoed around me as he fought his way back from the claws of death. His wheels spun in the dirt to find purchase, every light on his frame, internal and external, flared to life at its brightest setting, and his engine _roared_.

As he lurched forward again, the scouting ship passed us directly overhead, chased by the hungry monsters, but its shields repelled what few its lights didn't. Whoever was piloting it had to have seen Prime's lights. The ship suddenly banked sharply right then coasted to the left, turning around swiftly and drifting down to the ground behind the hill ahead. Prime's flat tires flapped in defiance, but he pushed on, using every last sliver of energy he had remaining as he drove straight toward the scouting ship.

The wyrms noticed him and turned in midair to dive for us. A sharp jerk back then forward again tore my attention from the front windshield to the back where I just barely caught the sight of his jettisoned trailer disappearing into the darkness, tumbling in a rolling crash not unlike ours earlier. The sacrifice of the empty hunk of metal bought us the time we needed - the wyrms flew right past us to attack it since it was the easier target. As it disappeared into the darkness, I had to wonder where it had come from because I knew he didn't have it just a few astroseconds before. Not that it mattered - it served its purpose, and it explained why he had transformed in the first place rather than simply carrying me out and running.

He came to a sputtering, rolling stop near the base of the hill separating us from the scouting ship, gears and axles wailing in protest of the abuse he was giving them. His whole body shuddered violently from exhaustion, and his lights flickered as he fought off the urge to either shut down or die. I tried to turn over as best I could with him still restraining me, gripping his steering wheel to try to give him something to concentrate on other than how exhausted he was. I don't know if it helped, but he only hesitated there for a few seconds before pushing himself forward again, flat tires straining against the rocky hill though at least this hill didn't seem to be as riddled with uneven, sharp rocks as the previous one.

Two red pinpoints of light glowed from atop the hill, and his headlights gleamed off something metallic. I tried to see through the darkness ahead of us to determine what it was. He seemed surprised too, adjusting the lights in their place on his front to point them up the hill more to illuminate what caused the glint, and when it did, we both let out a startled noise as Ravage roared down at us to show us the way.

The sight of Ravage seemed to give him new strength, a temporary and desperate burst of energy driving him over the top of the hill where the impact of hitting level ground destroyed a third tire. Ravage darted away to leave us to follow, and now that we were over the hill, I could see the scouting ship where it sat waiting in the distance.

It wasn't actually a scouting ship - it was too big for one. The planet's choking darkness combined with the harshly bright lights shining from the ship made it hard to make out any details, but I could tell it was a small galaxy-class cruiser - capable of interstellar travel with a small crew of no more than ten and no less than four. Its design was blatantly Cybertronian in design though made of considerably more primitive materials, more than likely built at Autobot City on Earth. Ravage's presence, in addition to Rumble who stood vigilant at the midpoint between the hill and the ship, meant Soundwave had to be aboard. The real question was who else had survived and come looking for us?

The ship was surrounded by a huge wave of wyrms lurking at the edge of the vessel's light, the monsters trying to figure out how to get past the light and to what was probably the biggest meal they would have for the remainder of the planetary eclipse. Ravage ran ahead and leapt effortlessly over them, back in the safety of the light before they could even think of making a snack out of her tail. Rumble was still in the dark, but he wasn't helpless, shooting down any wyrms which had decided to ignore the ship and try their luck eating him.

As we passed him, Rumble hopped onto Prime's back, onto the section where his trailer had once hooked onto, and climbed up on top of him to kill a section of the wyrms standing between us and the ship. That was all I could watch - this side of the hill was rougher than the other, especially with three of Prime's tires flattened. I needed my arm to wrap around myself and keep my spark chamber inside me rather than holding me up so I could watch what was happening outside. My spark casing had already worked its way partially out of my mangled side, and we were too close to escaping this horrible place - I wasn't about to let the rough ground decide my fate.

I knew we were inside the ship when he once again came to a slow, shaking stop, painfully bright light and walls of metal visible through his windows. He fell totally still again, engine shutting off. I could see shadows darting all around him but couldn't make out who they were or what they were saying, but I could make an educated guess - they were more than likely rushing to get him the energon he needed before his systems completely crashed if they hadn't already. I heard Rumble climb down from atop Prime just before the driver's side door opened, and I was greeted by Frenzy's startled face.

"Starscream!" he yelped, and I couldn't help but let out a tired laugh at how surprised he seemed, like he hadn't actually expected to find me inside Prime. He clambered inside I assume to see how best to extract me from Prime, babbling the whole time as only Rumble and Frenzy knew how. "I knew 'ya were alive, but...holy slag - what in Primus' name happened t'yer lap?!" That earned another tired laugh from me, and I wanted to ask him if that was all he cared about and tell him I'd learned a few new tricks to show him, but I didn't bother. I couldn't stand to hear my own broken voice anymore much less subject him to it.

He and Rumble were careful about extracting me from Prime, both looking very disturbed at the mess of ash I left behind as well as how bits of me continued to crumble in their grip. Half in and half out of Prime, I heard more than I felt something snap inside me, and I just barely had time to look down and think, _That can't be good_ , before I saw my spark casing fall free of my slagged side. The last rotting cable snapped, and my body ceased functioning.


	8. Chapter 8

I was told later what happened. The last thing I can clearly recall is rolling down the slope and crashing. I don't remember driving up the hill, I don't remember mowing down dozens of wyrms, and I don't remember entering the ship - I don't even remember Rumble or Ravage even though I was told Rumble was on top of me for the last portion of the drive. After my painful and rather embarrassing crash down the slope from the cave, my memory is a blank until I awoke, aching all over, in what looked like a repair bay with several friendly and deeply missed faces hovering over me.

"Long time, Optimus," one spoke to me with a smile. "'Ya look like a Sharkticon chewed 'ya up and decided 'e didn't like the taste a' 'ya." Primus, I missed Ironhide's drawl.

"I feel like it too, old friend," I responded, hating how weak my voice was. I moved my gaze to Ratchet and Wheeljack, unable suppress a shudder of relief. I almost couldn't believe that Ratchet and Ironhide had survived - my last memories of them were telling them to go find their own evacuation pod just before Unicron tore into Cybertron. Yet, there they stood over me as alive as they were when I left them far too many years ago.

"It's going to take a lot of repairs and energon infusions to get you back in shape," Ratchet was saying during my reverie. "But when we're finished with you, you'll be as good as new."

"I couldn't save Arcee," I blurted out. I needed to get that out even though I was sure they already knew. I didn't mention Arcee in the final distress call, only myself and Starscream, and my other distress beacons were generic calls for aid. "She died before we could escape Cybertron."

"We guessed, Optimus," Wheeljack assured me from where he was hooking me up to another energon cube, infusing my weakened body with energy. He looked back to me when he was finished and seemed to anticipate what I was going to ask. "There aren't many of us left compared to what we once were."

Ratchet nodded, taking over the explanation as he said, "A very good number of Autobots survived - most of them were on Earth at the time. Of the ones who weren't, Jazz, Spike, Bumblebee, Ultra Magnus, Hot Rod, Kup, and the Dinobots survived. The Decepticons weren't so lucky."

Ironhide finished for them both, "Th'only ones we know of are Soundwave, four a' his cassettes, Skywarp, three a' th'Constructicons, Thrust, an' Thundercracker. An' now Starscream. There may be more out there like y'all were though."

"Where is Starscream?" I asked. I couldn't remember anything that happened after we left the cave and I crashed - I had to know if my rushed exit had damaged him further if not finished him off or if he was finally getting the professional treatment he needed for whatever was wrong with him.

Ratchet shook his head but then answered to quell my growing sense of dread, "His spark chamber fell out of his body while Rumble and Frenzy were pulling him out of you. Thankfully, Rumble acted fast to catch it before it hit the floor, but he had to drop the end of Starscream's body he was holding in order to do it. The impact more or less finished off his body, but it needed to be completely rebuilt anyway. I've got his spark in stasis now just over there." He jerked a thumb to point behind him, and Ironhide slid a hand under my back for support when I tried to sit up. They tried to keep me down, but I had to see it for myself to assure myself he really was fine and alive.

The first thing I noticed was Soundwave's back as he tapped away at a console at the other end of the room with Ravage curled around his feet. Frenzy was sitting on a table not far away, resting on his knees. He was on the same table as the machine which was keeping Starscream's spark in stasis, and the Cassetticon was slowly running one of his small hands up and down one edge of the spark chamber. Starscream's spark was dim as it had been the two times I removed the casing before he awoke in the cave, asleep so as to avoid subjecting him to sensory deprivation any further. Between his spark chamber and the table on which I sat was a second medical table which held what remained of his body.

Under the bright light of the ship, I could finally see just how badly his body had deteriorated. It was a miracle from Primus that he had lived as long as he did. His paint was flaked, dull, and peeling in the very few places he had any remaining at all, and the ashen grey of necrosis had taken his right foot and was starting on his fingers. I saw what Ratchet meant when he said the fall had "more or less finished off his body" - Starscream's right thigh was split open and probably only still connected by a few wires, his shoulder vent had crumbled, his cockpit was shattered, and he only had half of his head left. It was a gruesome and chilling sight, but it was made less disturbing when I looked away and back to his dim spark where it drifted in stasis, secure in the knowledge that he was still alive.

Satisfied, I let Ironhide ease me back down onto my own table and turned my attention back to the three friends I thought I'd lost. "What all did I miss?"

Wheeljack laughed. "I think we'd better give you the abridged version so you can get some more rest. We're on our way back to Earth now, and you can get the full story there." He placed a hand on the table and leaned against it, his other hand resting on his hip. "Ironhide an' Ratchet reported what happened to Cybertron when they got back to Autobot City."

Ratchet took over from there, "We were worried when we didn't receive anything from you. Ultra Magnus manned a search party to head back and see if he could find any survivors. Galvatron intercepted and separated the search team, but we eventually met back up on the planet Junk. By the time we found a new ship, we found Galvatron's armada trying to fight Unicron who was headed to Earth. Unicron sucked us all inside it where we got separated again."

"We're not quite sure what happened after that," Ironhide finished. "After 'bout six cycles, Unicron started breakin' up." He cut himself off and glanced over his shoulder when the door to the room hissed open. He grinned jerked his thumb over his shoulder as he continued, "An' then Hot Rod comes outta nowhere gatherin' everybody back up t'escape sportin' a new look an' a new name."

Hot Rod - or, at least, he used to be - came into view beside me. He was much larger than I remembered him, and his features were more distinguished. As a former Matrix bearer, I could feel its thrum inside him, and I knew I was in the presence of the new Prime. I like to blame my lapse in courtesy on the fact that I was still exhausted.

" _Hot Rod_?" I blurted, my stupefied shock evident in my voice as I had never expected him to be chosen as the next Prime.

All four of them laughed at my surprise. "It surprised me too," Hot Rod responded when he finished snickering. "The name's Rodimus Prime now. Oh, stop that," he chided when I tried to raise a weak hand in a gesture of respect. "Not only are you in too bad a shape to be worrying about that, it just feels wrong. As far as we're concerned, you'll always be Prime." His statement was corroborated with a trio of nods from the others, and I was too tired to argue.

Instead, I asked, "What about Mega- Galvatron?" That new name was going to take some getting used to as was Hot Rod's.

"Don't worry about him," Rodimus reassured me. "He's dead. I made sure of that, and the surviving Decepticons we've found so far aren't eager to continue the war." My relief must have showed since I felt Ratchet's hand on my shoulder. I wouldn't have been surprised if the only reason the surviving Decepticons didn't want to continue the war was because they were grotesquely outnumbered, but it was peace. Whatever the reasons, I was going to welcome it with open arms. I knew Starscream agreed though maybe not as much, and I was never quite certain if he truly meant what he said months ago before the planetary eclipse or if he was simply too depressed to argue. That would have to be dealt with when he had a new body.

"Starscream won't be happy when he hears you killed Galvatron before he could," I said, amused. I could see Starscream's reaction to being denied his revenge. I wasn't sure if he would throw a tantrum, sulk, try to shoot Rodimus for denying him, or all three. I was leaning toward all three.

"Considerin' his track record, Rodi' probably did 'im a favor," Ironhide scoffed.

Rodimus looked ready to say something in response, but Ratchet cut him off. "We'll all have plenty of time to reminisce and explain what he missed later. Right now, he needs rest, so if you don't have to be here, I want you out." No one could cut one as tough as Ironhide and incorrigible as Hot Rod down to size like Ratchet. With a few parting words, the three left, leaving me more or less alone with Ratchet. Soundwave was still against the far wall typing at the console for whatever reason with Ravage and Frenzy hovering nearby. I had no idea what he was doing, but Ratchet didn't make him leave, so I assumed he belonged.

I moved my gaze over to Ratchet who had turned away to check the computer monitoring me. "I don't remember coming aboard," I told him. "How low were my energy levels?" When he looked as if he wasn't going to answer for a moment, I knew it was bad. "You may as well tell me. I'm fine now."

"You were down to three percent," he replied. "Your systems nearly crashed as soon as you were inside. Some of your vital components are still in danger of shutting down from a combination of lack of energy and some sort of toxin I'm still filtering out of you. How did your fuel lines become infected with this?" I explained as best and as quickly as I could the last five years of consuming the tainted energon though I did leave out the details of what Starscream and I had done to make the last few months' worth. I only stated it was low quality. "Well, if it's all you could get..." Ratchet shook his head. "I'm going to be working it out of you for a while though. It did a lot of damage, and you running so low didn't help at all. You shouldn't have transformed while you were that low." He crossed his arms over his massive chest and favored me with his trademark "you slagging idiot" glare.

Primus, I missed him.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," I muttered in response. "And it worked." That earned me a scolding slap upside my helmet, and I laughed. I missed this so much.

"Well, you just shut up and get some rest," he ordered, his tone leaving no room for argument. Not that I wanted to. My optics were trying to shut down on their own anyway, so I let them and gave a small shiver as I allowed myself to truly _relax_ for most likely the first time in a quarter of a vorn. I shook off the claw-like grip of depression and focused on what the future held, now secure in the knowledge that I _would_ see the future - a future that held my closest friends and peace.

The future looked bright already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the ending wasn't too campy. I seriously thought of no less than **6** bad endings and could think of more if I tried, but this was the only _good_ ending I could come up with.
> 
> Thank you everyone for your kind words and input! Sorry about the physics screw-ups - I'm an English major, not a science major.
> 
> As far as I'm concerned, their story is done. I did start a sequel to this, but I don't know that I'll finish it. I really want to go back and do the other survivors' stories first, so we'll see.
> 
> Also, I'm glad people liked the homage to _Pitch Black_. When I first wrote this, I honestly didn't expect that to go over as well as it ultimately did!


	9. Deleted Scene: Prime's Mask

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally wanted to include this in the main story, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to work it in without postponing returning to the plot even further. This takes place between chapters 5 and 6. If anything in their behavior is odd or OOC, it's because I pretty much just threw it together due to desperately wanting to write it.
> 
> I listened to _Star-Stealing Girl_ from Radical Dreamers while writing this. Now, given the mellow tune of this song, one would NOT normally associate it with Prime/Starscream, but it...fits this so disturbingly well. *creeped out*

Blue fingers traced over silver metal which reflected the soft glow of red optics. The fingers were dull, paint worn and peeling, but the metal they traced was, somehow, still new though not as shiny as it could have been. The optics above it were offline and dark, but he knew they would shine a brilliant blue once their owner awoke. Soft white light broke the choking darkness, dimmer than it usually was since the owner was offline. The other was thankful for the consideration.

Starscream let the fingers of his remaining hand trace over the middle ridge of Optimus Prime's mask again. He tilted the offline mech's head first one way then the other in an attempt to find a latch or catch of some kind, anything which might remove it, but he found nothing and soon gave up, instead lacing his palm on Optimus' chest so he could rest his chin on his hand. He shifted his mutilated body so it settled more comfortably on top of Optimus where they lay together on the cavern floor. As far as he could tell, there was no way to remove or even open it. Surely, he had a mouth behind it or something similar. Surely, it was not _part_ of his face. Was it?

Regardless of his lack of progress, he found himself going over it again, pressing curious blue fingers against the middle ridge to see if he could find a seam which would part it, but once more, he found and accomplished nothing more than awakening the larger mech.

Starscream had to admit he was truly beginning to like Optimus' touch. Of course, he would never openly admit it even if the cobalt hand which slid up the back of his thigh, over his aft, and trailed up his wingless back felt very relaxing. It was almost a pity he did not continue.

Blue optics finally came online, but the larger mech obviously had not expected to wake to Starscream so closely scrutinizing his face. Optimus' head jerked back as much as the cavern floor would allow and swore quietly as he promptly offlined his optics again. "Don't _do_ that," he grumped and raised his other hand to rub at his optics, cleaning them of cavern dust.

"Jazz or Elita-1 ever tell you that you can be awfully cranky after interfacing?" Starscream huffed in response, too comfortable stretched across Prime's torso to bother moving just yet.

"They didn't startle me like that when I first awoke," came the grumbled reply. He again brought his optics online and gave the smaller mech a confused look as their position fully registered - Starscream lay stretched over Optimus, cockpit to windshields and optic to optic. It was the position in which they had interfaced last just before Prime fell into recharge. "Not that I'm complaining, but why haven't you moved yet?" As he asked it, the hand on Starscream's back moved again, sliding up to where his wings used to be then back down, stopping just short of the smaller mech's aft where his hand then went back upwards.

"Didn't feel like it," Starscream answered simply, and try though he did, he could not keep a relaxed sigh out of his words. The Autobot did not have to wonder what triggered it, and his amused glance earned him an offended, red glare. "Shut up."

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to." As a quick attempt to change the subject and get the leader's mind on something else, Starscream touched his mask again and once more ran his fingers down the middle ridge. "Does this come off?" The oddly random question earned him a surprised flicker of blue optics. That was one of the last things he expected to come from Starscream's vocalizer.

"No, it doesn't," Prime answered. Red optics seemed to glow a little brighter as curious blue fingers grew bolder.

"So you don't have a face behind it?" the former scientist inquired, fascinated.

"It _is_ my face."

"But how do you take in energon?"

Blue optics flickered in a blink as it suddenly dawned upon him where Starscream was going with the topic, and he had to admit he was rather amused. The stagnant air of the cavern was replaced with an air of nostalgia when Optimus was flooded with nearly forgotten memories of a nearly identical conversation with Alpha Trion shortly after his initial activation in his new body when he ceased to be Orion Pax and became Optimus Prime.

"It's not metal," he patiently explained. "It looks and feels like it, but it's made of a mineral Alpha Trion found over a hundred thousand vorns ago - long before he built me. It absorbs energon like dirt absorbs liquid." He had to greatly resist the urge to laugh at how he had effortlessly captured Starscream's undivided attention, the smaller mech scrutinizing his mask even closer than before. "I'm not the only one with something like it, you know. Alpha Trion wasn't the only one who used it."

"I didn't think so - I often watched Soundwave when he energized, and it seemed to go right through his mask."

Optimus nodded. "His is probably the same mineral. Wheeljack, Grimlock, and Blaster's cassettes Rewind and Eject are the same. I would imagine the Constructicons are as well - those with face plates and masks, that is, but I could be wrong. Seaspray's is retractable as are Powerglide's and Cosmos'."

"Does it register sensation?" Starscream asked, and Optimus nodded again.

"Yes, I can feel with it just like any other part of my body," he answered, simplifying the other mech's more technical description. He hesitated before he tilted his head to one side and offered, "If you'd like, you can see it work." Already bright red optics shined brighter as if their owner had been given one of the things he wanted most in the universe, and for a brief moment, Starscream disturbingly and irrevocably reminded him of Wheeljack.

 _What kind of mech would he have become had he not been seduced by the Decepticon way?_

Optimus more firmly pressed his hand against Starscream's back so as not to throw him off as he used his other hand to push himself up into a sitting position with his back against the cavern wall, letting Starscream settle in his lap. Once he was certain the unbalanced mech would not topple, Prime reached out and took one of the three energon cubes they had remaining, and as Starscream watched intently with all the enthusiasm and fascination of the scientist he was in a previous life, Optimus pressed the cube to his mask and partially drained its contents.

It was exactly as he said - it was like watching the ground soak up rain, but the metallic texture remained the same. As he watched the telltale shimmer of energon soak into the mineral, Starscream raised his hand to touch it. It was still smooth like any piece of metal, but the energon passed through it effortlessly. The tips of his fingers came away glistening with energon he had wiped away before it was absorbed, but as soon as he pressed his fingers back to the mask, the mineral it was made of absorbed that as well and left his fingers clean.

Optimus dimmed his optics during Starscream's hand-on scrutiny. Neither Jazz nor Elita-1 found his mask so enthralling and, after touching it once or twice, ignored it completely. Elita-1 had even been disappointed at his lack of a mouth, and Jazz had tugged on the mask only to earn himself a pained howl. Starscream, however, was utterly fascinated. His touch was feather-light at first then grew firmer after a moment before it became light again as he ran his fingers the entire mask. His touch was almost soothing, and he nearly let out a noise of disappointment when it departed.

Optimus activated his optics again when the touch quickly returned, this time wet as Starscream smoothed his thumb from one side of the mask to the other, thumb coated with energon from the cube Prime still held. He left a line of the shimmering substance which he then watched soak into the surface. Optimus, not for the first time, wished he had a real mouth under it so he could smile.

"Why wouldn't he just give you a normal face?" Starscream finally asked to break the silence, crimson gaze still on Prime's mask as he repeated his action, this time with two fingers instead of his thumb to make two lines of energon to be absorbed.

"This body was meant to fight," the larger mech answered as he dimmed his optics once more and let the other do what he wished. He was enjoying it far too much to ask Starscream to stop even if there was a reason to. "He thought a battle mask would be better to have than a face that could become disfigured by battle damage since the face is harder to repair than most other parts of the body."

Starscream made a small noise of understanding but said nothing in response. Silence filled the cavern for the next breem until the energon cube was completely emptied and Starscream drew one last line across Optimus' mask. He made this one a jagged zigzag just for variety then lifted his thumb to his own mouth to clean it of excess energon and leaned back away from Prime's face where he found a knee already propped up for support of his back.

"If we ever get off of this rock, you're going to have to let me study this mineral further," he finally stated after another lengthy moment of silence. Prime again wished he could smile.

"I'd be glad to."


End file.
